‘We’re not going to get his arm casted, he’ll be fine. He deserved it – he’s such a rascal sometimes.’ This is what our team heard last week in the village regarding the boy that fell out of a tree and broke something in his forearm. And I think we were all caught off guard. We know medical treatment isn’t available or people don’t have money for it, but to say someone deserved something, especially in the situation of an accident and a child… to say you’re not even going to try to fix it when there’s a small clinic that could at least do an Xray 20 minutes away….

Is their thought process rooted in Buddhism belief that you need to suffer in this life in order not to have to suffer in the next life? Am I judging the situation because I believe Christian teachings that say every individual is valuable and suffering has a purpose but can and should be helped? Am I judging the situation because as Americans we fix things even when they don’t need to be fixed just to make them a little better, a little prettier? Is there a happy medium that doesn’t care about aesthetics as much as I might yet allows for elimination of certain areas of suffering? Is it OK that his arm is healing back a little crooked? Maybe. But I’m stuck at maybe not right now.