"Doamna mea, mi-e frica." I see the fear in her eyes, her hand on her belly, rounded out with the child she is so afraid for. I hear it in her half-whisper. She is afraid. Something isn't right, and she is afraid for her child. Please can I help her.
They're not like us, I've been told. They have babies just like animals. They don't have any trouble, but there is no emotion. What I see doesn't look like that. Maybe sometimes there is an appearance of callousness, a way of talking matter-of-factly about terrible loss. But maybe if they didn't find a way to accept the hardness of life, it would tear them apart. This is the second girl we've known of, in the space of a few weeks, who has lost a child at nearly full term.
Please can you help me, she had asked. And I had to say "I'm sorry". I'm sorry. The words are so inadequate. I didn't even have to words to explain how sorry. If only the car worked. If only I knew where to go, and could speak and understand her language well enough to know what was wrong, to talk to a doctor. I didn't even have the money to call her a taxi. Ask the neighbours, I said, they have a car, someone will know what to do. If only I'd had someone to watch my children, I could have gone with her, held her hand, made sure she got home safely.
I saw her again a while later. Someone had taken her to the hospital, but she had lost the child.
Imagine being scared and alone, feeling the life that has been growing within you for months slipping away, and being helpless to do anything to stop it. Imagine having to go from door to door, begging for help from strangers. Would she have found any compassion at the hospital? The colour of her skin and the poverty evidenced by her clothing are enough to make me question whether she would have.
It was only a minor incident, only one of many strangers who come to our gate asking for help, but when I think of that girl, I have so many questions I can hardly put them to words. Is it worth being here? Maybe this is the kind of task better left to the wealthy, to those who would have had the resources to help. We refer people to local churches for help, and they are turned away. We hope that others around us might begin to see ways that they might help those in need around them, but it is so hard to get past generations of ingrained prejudice, and they fear being overwhelmed by the level of need, or being taken advantage of. So we do what we can, and look people in the eye, and offer them compassion as our fellow human beings trying to get through this hard life, and maybe that, at least, is something.
"They're not like us", I've been told. But I remember the fear in a young woman's eyes, and her hand on the child within her.
