December 7th, 2007
All Good Things...
It isn't every day that you meet a person who makes a fundamental and permanent impact on your life. Adela Njuu, my host mother, was one such person. As I sat in the tiny living room of her house for the first time, more than one year ago, I don't think I could have possibly imagined how much I would come to appreciate and care about both her and her family. She gave so much to me, and asked nothing in return. Life in Tanzania can be frustrating at times, because many people will see you as a source of money, and nothing else. But she treated me like a human being, and indeed more than that - like her own child. I will never forget how proud she was when I brought home my final Swahili exam, or how she was so concerned with me being the best-dressed trainee at our swearing-in ceremony.
Yet memories are all I have now, because last night I received news from her daughter that she had passed away, finally succumbing to the cancer that she had been struggling against for almost 6 months. Since June it has been an emotional rollercoaster - the initial shock and despair on finding out she had cancer, to the hope that she would recover after having an operation and beginning chemotherapy, to the heartbreaking pain she had to endure due to the chemotherapy, to more hope when she seemed to be gaining strength, to the crushing defeat when an ultrasound showed additional tumors, to a feeble chance that a second operation would remove all the remaining tumors, and finally to the acceptance that her fate was sealed when the doctors saw during the second operation that there was nothing more they could do.
And so it is with an extremely heavy heart that I bid farewell to one of the friendliest, most welcoming, and most giving people I have had the privilege of knowing in my entire life. She was more than just someone whose house I lived in for a short while and then said goodbye to - she was like the second parent that I never had. The following words are for her, and I hope that she can hear them, wherever she may be:
May the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord shine His face upon you and be gracious unto you
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace