Tony

I’m now spending most of my time in Huambo, Angola’s second city and the place where I lived for a few months in 2005. I still work in M’banza Congo, and I’m starting to dread my returns. The last three times I’ve come back, I’ve received news that one of the neighbors' children has died. First it was a baby girl that I didn’t really know well because she was usually inside the house. Then came a 2 year old girl who used to hang out outside my house and peek in while I was working. Sometimes she would get up the courage to wander inside the house. That one hit a little harder. But this last one is the kicker. Tony was somewhere between 3 and 4 years old, and was possibly the cutest kid in the world. He was my favorite kid here. Every time I would arrive home he would run out shouting Natani! Natani! Then when I would go up to him to say hi he would hug my leg and shyly respond to my questions of how his day was going. He hadn’t been really healthy for some time. His parents had sent him to the DRC for treatment and I was worried, but he came back. He seemed relatively ok, except for always having a swollen, hard belly. The last time I was here he also seemed very lethargic and wasn’t his usual happy self. The thought occurred to me that one day I would arrive to the news that he had died, but I tried to push the thought out of my mind. After all, he never seemed severely ill. He was never bed-ridden or in obvious discomfort. Now I think about what I could have done for him. Maybe I could have taken him to the Cuban doctors, paid for treatment...but nobody ever said he might die. Sometimes this place really sucks.