Lindy and her brother outside their home in Likasi, Congo.In a village called Chitulu, in
Democratic Republic of Congo, on a home-based care visit one day, my
wife and I met a little girl named Lindy. She is five years old. She
has dark, mourning eyes, and wispy little legs that poke out beneath
her skirt. She is HIV-positive. No one seems to know where their father
is, and their very sick mother died shortly after Lindy’s birth. She
has a seven-year old brother who is healthy. The kids live now with
their grandparents.
The grandfather is very old and works each day
farming in their field outside town. He loves his grandchildren very
much, and when Lindy began getting sick, he carried her on his back to
the local clinic. The grandmother is completely blind. She sits on a
soft chair in the middle of their house smiling with her eyes wide
open: creamy white moons leaking slow drips onto her cheeks.
This is
a broken family, but together somehow they are strong. The grandmother
calls out to Lindy: “Lindy, is the door open?” or “Lindy, is it raining
outside?” The little girl is her grandmother’s eyes. The grandfather
relies heavily on his disabled wife for the emotional encouragement to
keep working in his old age. Recently the grandmother became very ill,
and it seemed for a while that she might not live. His old wife’s
illness almost killed the grandfather.
The grandmother told us Lindy loved to go to school, that even though she was too young and was sick, she constantly whined and begged her grandparents to go to school.
