Cholera, a World Away

When I was in middle school my family decided to join up with World Vision in supporting a child overseas. Honestly, I don't remember the little boys name who we "adopted" (it's a weird African name), but we've been getting photographs of him, updates on his schooling, and drawings/letters from him a few times a year since then. This August we got the same packet we always get - some drawings that he drew, an update and a writeup from the person who is "in charge" of his World Vision Supported School in Zimbabwe, and a picture of him. One issue though - the picture wasn't of him. It was as obvious as can be, it was NOT him. The drawings were 10x better than his previous drawings. Everything about it just seemed wrong.

I didn't know about this until a few weeks ago, but Mom and Dad have been worrying for a while. They of course called World Vision up. It could be a clerical error of course, paperwork could have gotten mixed up, who knows. World Vision responds and is extremely concerned. Apparently this very very rarely happens (but it has happened). They express concern and put forth an effort to track down the child. We don't hear anything. We call back, they say that they have had a hard time tracing. We decide it'd be a good idea to look stuff up in the news. As it turns out, the crazy election stuff over there apparently hasn't been good for mission organizations. In July, World Vision and many other organizations are kicked out of the country by the "president" who is trying to keep power even though he lost the election. We put pieces together and figure that is probably why we haven't heard anything.

Okay, so when I find out about all this a few weeks ago, we start hearing news stories about Cholera in Zimbabwe (actually, we are just reading news stories online, U.S. news channels never has any news related to any actual world issues). 50 something deaths, a few hundred others sick, all from around the exact area of Zimbabwe that our child is from. Obviously we are worried. World Vision is kicked out, Jimmy Carter wasn't even let in the country when he wanted to help a few weeks ago, and now Cholera. What is going on? Just today I saw another news update about Zimbabwe (from BBC World, man, I hate that America cares only about itself with news!). 978 people have now been killed. And we still don't know anything about our child.

So what's this all about? I don't know. Just keep Zimbabwe and our child in your prayers. A world away has hit home. It's also a throwback for me this summer when BBC World News is the only thing I ever watched on TV, and Zimbabwe was always the top story. World Vision may be back in the country now, I don't know, they usually don't post news stories about mission organizations going into countries, mostly just when they are kicked out. But pray that World Vision will be let back in. I'd like to get a picture of him on here, but I don't have one.

Yep, so that's what's on my mind right now after seeing that most recent 978 death news story.