Some things just hurt...

I don't often tell you about the images that I see that haunt me. But here we go:

After a very interesting conversation over a banana lassi, I was walking back with my friend who is a monk here. I forget what we were chatting about at the time, and it doesn't really matter because our whole conversation was rudely interrupted by the scene taking place before us.

In the street there was a young nomad woman, dressed in the traditional garb with her hair in the standard countless small braids. She was silently, but nonetheless quite violently, weeping. In her lap lay the unmoving form of a dirty child: hair disheveled, face and clothes filthy, mouth slightly open, body limp. Beside the woman passers-by were laying small amounts of money. No one was really stopping.

I did. I couldn't help it. Humanity here is so raw and tragic that I often find myself stopping, helplessly, to ask for help from the only One who is able.

This time I tugged at my monk friend's sleeve and begged him to find out if we could do anything: call the hospital, pay for a cab, whatever. He looked at me, quite stunned that I was asking, and replied quite calmly "Kelly, I think is no problem, I think is fake, just for money."

I didn't know how to respond, we kept walking, but I must have been visibly upset because the next words out of his mouth are "Kelly, please don't cry."