Dying to Self

This is an excerpt from an email I wrote while having a particularly bad day in Ghana. It helps show what conditions were like there. It puts dying to self in a new perspective.

I want to come home. I can handle everything else I've had to put up
with, but I can't handle this. Imagine you're trying to feed a child
(not Evan, he's doing tons better and eating much faster) who has
trouble swallowing because she has some musculoskeletal disorder.
You know (lucky guess) that since you've never fed her before,
chances are very good the only feeding method she's ever known is the
"tip head back as far as it will go until mouth pops open and pour it
in" approach, which causes her to maybe get a quarter of the food.
So you're painstakingly giving her a sip at a time and note that as
she gets used to this incredibly innovative method that she becomes
very excited and really starts to enjoy a procedure she usually
screams through. Now, imagine while your left hand is aching from
holding up her sweaty head (it keeps slipping), you notice a
cockroach crawling around the crib where she's sitting. You've seen
cockroaches before and been ok, but this one won't go away. It would
be impossible to shoo it away because your hands are occupied in a
delecate balance - it's not like there's any convenient surface to
set anything down on nearby. Never mind the fact that there's a
cockroach in the bed, however, because you then notice that in the
window on the far wall there are about twenty rats. You've seen one
in that area a couple of times, but never this. Then you hear a
crash and rustling and squeaking from the window two inches from
where you are precariously positioned. Note that all along you've
been incredibly aware that when you see any critter or rodent that if
you react as if anything is amiss, the kids that have to live here
might start to be upset by them, so you've gotten very good at hiding
how you feel.

That's setting the scene. I'm sorry. I dropped the kid and screamed.