Today Ice’s little cousin died. She was about 10 years old. From what I can gather, she died of appendicitis. Basically, her parents didn’t have enough money for her to have an operation so they just bought some medicine at the pharmacy and tried that. Then last night she got really bad and they took her to the new hospital on the edge of town but they couldn’t operate on her so she died. This new hospital is very basic and really can’t do much right now. This is a very sad but very common story. People here get very sick and everyone just waits for them to die. Like when Rita fell unconscious the night before Good Friday, many of the relatives that live near her gathered in her house and just waited. It was rather morbid really. In the villages where there is no medical help at all, people will just watch others die without doing anything to help them. They won’t even bother with fluids or anything. There’s just an acceptance that death is imminent and that’s it. This morning some of the friends of the little girl who died went to my neighbours to play and she asked them about the girl. They were quite matter of fact about the fact that she had died and didn’t show any obvious signs of grief. Back home everyone would be devastated at the death of a child. My hope is that the people here simply have a child-like faith and truly believe that this life is just a drop in the bucket and only a journey towards a much more wonderful and beautiful life with our Lord and Saviour. As opposed to believing that life simply has no value at all…