Keeping it light.

'I'm not very taken with your blog at the moment.' My daughter Skye confessed as we shared a moment of introspection at the days end.

Skye was weary after a day in the hospital ward, attending to all the ills, that are a consequence of terrible politics in this country.

All the results of that inadequacy, the failure to address basic human needs, lie in those hospital beds.

The human cost of poverty: Babies dying of malnutrition, and neglect. People too diminished by hopelessness to fight their alcohol or drug addiction. Too detached to care about passing on aids and syphillis to their children. Burnt in shack fires. Sick from contaminated water. Breathing in the germs of over-crowding.

'This is not why I did medicine.' Skye said sadly.

I can understand why my blog feels so thin to her. Can see why she can't 'hear my voice' amidst the writing. 'Where are your stories? You have so much to say...' my daughter laments.

Perhaps the same sense of sadness, the odd juxtaposition of my own reality against the acheing pain of 'out there', means... that I must (for now, at least) keep it light.

xxx

elle