Zione

Day 19: My First Love

This is difficult tonight. I’m tired. Depressed. Uninspired. But I’m not complaining. I “have it better then 95 percent of the 7 billion people on the planet,” as one wise sister-in-law told me when I complained. Even knowing  that doesn’t take away from the validity of reality of how I’m feeling here and now. 

I could write about my husband, But I won’t. That’s not because I don’t love him, but because some things I don’t want to write for the world to see. But really, the moment I saw today’s title, I already knew what to write about.  

My first love.

Maybe love is too strong a word for this emotion, but this is the first time I got attached to someone who was not from my close circle of immediate family/friends/comfort zone. 

We lived in Malawi. My parents’ job was humanitarian work, Feeding and clothing orphans, providing fresh water for rural communities, etc. I was somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12 when this happened. Once or twice a month my family would go visit Open Arms, a most aptly named orphanage. Check it out it if you want; it’s still going strong and we’re still getting updates on some of the children we used to know there ! It was my favourite place to go. There were little kids everywhere, and everyone always needed lots of love and hugs and playing with. The house mamas were happy, fun, loving women who loved to laugh and joke and sing. I liked the babies best, and after we’d been there a few times these ladies had me figured out. They knew I loved kids, even tho I was still quite much of a kid myself. 

One day I met a teeny tiny little girl named Zione. (For you English speakers’ information, this is pronounced Zee-oh-nay.)  I’m not sure how old she was at that point, somewhere between 6 months and a year maybe. She was skinny, HIV positive probably, and developmentally delayed. She liked me. And I loved her. I spent time feeding her a bottle, delighting in her sober brown eyes, feeling so grown up. Then I handed her back to her “mom” and went home. The next time we went there, I went and found her and spent time with her again. After that, the ladies knew that when I walked in the door, I wanted to see Zione. They always let me feed her; I think I even changed her diaper and paced the floor in a quiet room to help her sleep. One day when I arrived and looked for her, she wasn’t around. I got sacred. Luckily, she had only gone to the doctor; she was fine. And she was growing. She was catching up in her milestones. She was happy. I got to help feed her some of her first bites of food. If you’ve never sat on a floor surrounded by babies and toddlers learning to eat real food, you don’t know messiness. There was cereal everywhere, and I remember being shocked when one or two diapers overflowed. 

Zione, along with all the other babies, cried when we set them bac down on the floor and walked out the door. Leaving was the hardest.

I’m not sure what happened to Zione. I can’t remember if she was still there last time I went there; I kind of don’t think so. Wherever she is, she’s a teenager now and she probably has no idea she left such a deep impression on a Canadian girl’s heart.