What do I see different now?

When I was 9 or younger, I played with my cousins in our neighborhood. Running around in the baking sun, which potentially could cause serious illnesses, was a simple lifestyle that brought joy to my little heart. I did not see, or had not developed my intelligence enough to notice that there was something missing—life was not complete. This was more than 20 years ago. Then, I came back to my family more than 20 years later and here is what I saw. Now, my family is large. I have two sisters and two brothers and factor-in their offspring, including my brother’s second wife, and you will know what I mean by large. Out of a periphery, there are uncles with their wives and children and grand children. This would be called extended family in modern sense. But, we understand it differently in our traditional world. There is nothing extended. We all share what each member of our families is blessed with. So when I went back home this September 2008, I was confronted with real problems that I believed needed some solutions. When I talked to members of my family, they were willing to express what they saw clearly as problems: sickness, lack of cattle, lack of clothes, lack of food, and some just need money for whatever reasons best known to them. However, there were certainly some problems that were invisible to them, but clearly apparent enough for me to notice. Children were running around from Sun rise to Sun set. There was no school in the neighborhood for them to go to. Women were still traveling about a mile to go fetch water from the Nile River. This was the water I bathed in, and, most likely, the water used to cook my food. At least I knew that by the time the food reaches me, whatever germ in that water has undergone serious boiling to be too lethal to kill anymore. In fact, the real people I was worried then were those that went to fetch this water. To go to the bank of the Nile one has to walk bare foot and against the tie of flood that had encroached everywhere. Besides, there are crocodiles in the Nile that could possibly be waiting in the other end. I was also worried every morning that I saw my nephews and nieces wade through the water to go to the huts. I was concern that chances of these children catching a guinea worm in this water were as high as 85%. Or the worse case scenario would be snake bite in that water. Another curse of this water is infestation of mosquitoes. In this area, mosquitoes go so vicious. And if you had a mosquito net, like I did, you can hear them crying from the outside the net as if you owe them your own blood! Knowing that malaria is number killer of children in the continent of Africa gave me chills and more worries. I would be less human if this reality did not sink through and made me worried that something terrible can happen anytime one is beaten by malaria virus’s carrier mosquito. Besides, I arrived just about time when people would be harvesting their yields, if this was a blessed year. Unfortunately, all that was planted was washed away by flood. I would have not believed that anything was planted in those fields, if this destruction was shown to me in a video. But, the destruction was so pervasive that no crop was spared. Even today, I still ask myself: what will they eat now till the next harvest? In other words, what I saw generated the following questions in my mind. Do I see more challenging things that my family sees as less challenging? Or do we see the same challenges, but my family just does not have solutions insight to make any different choices? Or, perhaps, they just don’t see a way out given this is how they have always lived their lives dated back many generations.