We have many disabled children in the village. The usual sufferings are hydrocephalus, “weak bones” (insufficient development of the skeleton), sickle-cell disease (SCD) which is a debilitating illness, malnutrition (with its own plethora of disasters), arms and legs malformations, missing limbs, deformed spine.. and so many other indescribable horrors.

I kept thinking and researching why do these occur. For some of them, the reason is obvious: lack of nutrition and clean water, women giving birth in all sorts of conditions, often without any assistance. In some other situations, the malformations are due to women being abused whilst pregnant, not receiving enough sustenance during the pregnancy, or drinking / bathing / doing laundry in very polluted bodies of water. And then, unknown diseases and mutations. It is very difficult to go around such causes and conditions (but I am trying; at least, women can come to our hospital and give birth!) and so sometimes I am wondering…

…we are all wondering about this at a certain moment in life.

Why should children suffer like this?

At HOCT, we all do our best to stop the suffering of children. To change those horror photos that we see sometimes. We usually manage.

Christian, in the below photo, is a child who is always so excited!! He loves to come to the office and to be around people, around other children, to receive attention, to play a bit. He has a severe mental and coordination disability.

And so, what I believe is that those children are born and get to live among us, so that we may learn the true meaning of devotion, the true meaning of love, of boundless, unconditional love.

They feel our love.