Days 4-6: Highs and Lows

It has been a very full three days with very different experiences.  I have gone from very enjoyable experiences to yesterday being pretty low.  It is always best to follow the bad with the good so the low point of the past few days was being sick all of yesterday barely able to hold myself up.  I did not want to miss any of the organizations that we were going to see so i suffered through the day, but after going to bed early and having a good rest i woke up today feeling alive again, the mixture of the food, pollution, noise, and bumpy roads just all accumulated to knock me down all at once.  The other low experiences have been not being able to help all the people that really need it, part of the reason i came here was to help people in need but i find myself totally lacking in the ability to help the mass throngs of people stretching out their hands, crying for help only for those pleas to fall on deaf or unsympathetic ears.  It is all very overwhelming, and as much as it breaks my heart to tell someone "no i can't help you" the fact is that as an individual i can't help them all.

So those have been the lows but we have had some very good times here as well.  We have delivered our toys from "Happy Factory" to two organizations here out of the three that we brought them for, and the kids have been thrilled.  Along with the stickers, soccer balls, postcards, and money that we have brought for them they have been very appreciative. It has been great to see these kids and the adults who run their organization be so happy.  Another surprising high for the past few days have been the live music we have been able to go see, the music scene here is just as alive as it is in the US.  We saw a couple groups led by "What the Funk" which was a great funk group playing songs from the seventies and eighties, as well as another more folk style singer who was also very good.  We had a great time spending our evening hearing their talent.

 So i guess the take away from this blog posting is that we may not be able to help everyone, and some days we ourselves may feel really horrible, but we do what we can to help who we can, and the next day the sun will rise.  Our lives are filled with both bad an good, highs and lows, and what makes the difference is how we balance the two.  There may be a lot of outstretched hands needing help, but when more hands start reaching back to give that help, that is when the problem begins to be fixed and long term solutions can be made.  That is what the organizations we have been working with here are doing, and the more people like them that are out there the better our world will be.