Sorrow

Sometimes it's just hard to be a privileged person from a wealthy country
living in such a remote, poor place as PNG is.

This past week, my next-door neighbor here in the village gave birth to her
2nd child. A little boy. He only lived for 5 minutes.

A few weeks ago I did a post about how people here don't name their babies,
often for a month or more after their birth. It's probably exactly for
reasons like this. When the father came and told us about his baby the next
morning, Matt and I were both really sad. I have no idea why he didn't
live. There is a good chance that if she had been in any hospital in any
Western country, he would have survived and been a fine, healthy baby. But
what chance do you have when you're born in a bamboo and banana-leaf hut
with no medical help at all?

I can't even imagine what my neighbor is going through. I know there is a
much more....casual? relaxed? view of death here. Probably because they
see it a whole lot more than any of us do. But that doesn't make it any
easier.

To make things even more frustrating, the underlying beliefs of people can
be hard to deal with as well. Later, on the day we found out that the baby
had not lived, Matt was working with someone. The baby's death was brought
up, and the man's casual response was, "Well, he (the dad) obviously had sin
or something not right in his life." There is such a strong belief here
that things like the death of a child, sickness, crops failing and such are
the direct result of sin or "bad living" in someone's life. So not only are
these parents dealing with the loss of their child, but to think that lots
of their family, friends and neighbors are thinking that they are guilty of
doing something wrong....that's just hard to deal with.

I know that people here don't have access to medical care and such like we
in the Western world are used to. So they need some explanation for why
things have gone wrong. It's like the story in the Bible where the Pharisees
are trying to trap Jesus and ask him why the man was born blind. Was it
from his parents sinning? I know that our actions do have consequences, but
saying that this baby's parents are guilty for his death, when they already
are grieving over his loss, is just really hard to fathom.