Goodbye Mu#tan

Working as a health volunteer in Namibia has put me face to face with people who are suffering from TB, living with HIV, coping with poor nutrition or dealing with abuse.

This week, my job put me face to face with death, too.

Peace Corps warned us that as health volunteers we would likely lose a friend, a colleague or a community member during our course of service. I always imagined that for me, this person would be a little known coworker, a stranger I used to pass in town, or a teacher who often dropped by the clinic. I assumed it would be an elderly man or an older woman. Someone who had lived a long life. Someone who left a loving family behind.

I never imagined that it would be a 3-year-old girl named Mu#tan. A girl I’d played with every Saturday at the Sunrise Center. A girl who was quiet and shy around the other kids, but yelled my name and grabbed the fence whenever I passed by her house. A girl whose mother abandoned her, and whose 5-year-old brother—now all alone—can’t understand why she’s gone.

The reality is—I can’t either.