I Will Weep For You

I will weep for you, abanobe abanandi, my friend.

I will weep for the systems that keep you downtrodden.

I will weep for the resources that should be yours, that are promised, that are allocated, but never seem to arrive.

I will weep for all of the times that your malady was obvious, and the treatment even more so, but “That umuti does not come from the district anymore.”

I will weep for the times when the diagnosis was wrong, when the umuti you were given calmed your anxious mind that yearned for relief but failed to heal your broken body. I will weep for the misdiagnosed illness that has progressed to this mournful point, and I will weep for you, because your health system has failed you, and so very soon your body will fail you too. I will weep for the family you leave behind. I weep for their anguish, and I weep for the fear that pervades your village and your province, for the fear that hisses of ancestors and spirits who loom in your hearts, masquerading somehow as bigger and stronger than your God.

I will weep for you.

But please, dear friend, will you weep for me?

Weep for my complicity in the broken subjugating systems.

Weep for my selfishness, for the speed at which I forget how very little my neighbors have, for the pride and arrogance that seeps in around my genuine desire to serve and help.

Weep for the times when my skills fail me. Weep for the times that wisdom has escaped my mind, sureness has fled my hands, and compassion has left my heart.

And my brother, please, weep for the times when the misdiagnosis is mine. Weep for the times I am wrong, have been wrong, will be wrong. Weep for the struggle between me and my God, my God who is Healer, my God who can fix all things, but sometimes doesn’t. Weep for the weight of the burden, and for the times that I must lay it down, and for the times I accidentally drop it. Weep at the task ahead of us, at this battle we are fighting together, you and I.

Weep with me, as I weep with you. But do not despair.

For not all weeping must be sorrow, and not all sorrow must last until morning. When your brothers and sisters gather on the tired concrete stoop of the clinic in the morning, perhaps some may need us to weep with them. But others will need us to dance. They will need us to laugh together at my atrociously minimal grasp of the Bemba language. They will need us to rejoice over the kilogram of gained weight. They will need us to smile with the declaration of a healthy blood pressure. They will need us to coo over pregnant bellies and joyfully distract terrified toddlers.

And if it happens that along the way someone needs to weep, then we will weep with them, you and I. We know how to do that.