Sponsoring a Child in Africa

What an incredible rush (as we used to say back in the day)!!!  I just committed to sponsoring a child in Senegal, West Africa.  I listen to KZOK radio every morning--specifically the Bob Rivers Show.  They are the ones who create Twisted Tunes and they don't play much music, other than what they have created.  Mostly they talk, interview comics or scientists (Bob is very into science) or people in the news, but for the past couple of years they have been involved with World Vision, an organization that Bill Gates also supports.  Bob and other members of his show have been to Senegal to see the conditions first hand.  They have all sponsored children and have child-sponsor drives every year.  This year Bob's son, Keith and his wife and Arik, the show's producer, went to Senegal.  It was a world-view changer for Keith.  Keith just returned and he was on the radio show this morning trying to explain his feelings.  He couldn't stop choking up.  I have been listening to these drives for a few years now and been tugged and pulled, but had resisted actually sponsoring a child--it s $30 a month commitment and I felt that it was too much for my limited budget.  Yes, I have a husband who is rolling in dough, though most of it goes into savings for our retirement, but our finances are kept separate, so anything like this comes out of my Social Security and pension from the State, which isn't huge.

However, this morning, listening to Keith talk about these kids and his epiphany, listening to him come to tears every time he attempted to talk about it--that got to me like nothing has before.  So I got online and I went to the website that KZOK has put links to all over their website and I chose the second child they showed me, because she is almost exactly the same age as my granddaughter, Alison.  Her name is Sokhna Diarra, born March 15, 2005.   She doesn't go to school yet and my donation will help her do that when the time comes.  I have the World Vision address so that I can send her letters, which I will do as often as I can.  I felt that I spend so much on stupid stuff, coffees, books I don't need, (shelves of them I haven't read yet), clothes I don't need and my grandchildren have everything they have ever wanted and more.  I can afford this and I must do it.  I used to dream of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and then marriage and children happened and the Peace Corps became something that wasn't ever going to happen.  I also used to dream of being Dian Fossey or Jane Goodall, going to Africa, studying primates.  Well, that was pie in the sky--no degree in anthropology or any science that would get me there and an aversion to outdoor camping(!).  So Africa has been in my dreams for decades.  Here is my connection to that continent.  Rather than being a tourist there, which is still a possibility, I am going to help this one child.  

I will put addresses here to the KZOK website and to the World Vision website, just in case anyone who reads this has a charitable inclination.  It feels good, but more important, much more important than how I feel right now, is that this little girl may have a better life because of the money I am sending.  She may have more opportunity, she may have more faith in life from the letters I will send her and the gifts I will send her.  Hopefully, one day I will meet her.  They wrote in the little description of her and her life, that she is in "satisfactory" health.  Maybe this will help her achieve good health.   

www.kzok.com 

  www.worldvision.org  

I'll keep you posted on how this is working out, but I have great hope that Sokhna will benefit and it's going to feel damned good to write to her and send her things.  She will be grandchild #7.  And 7 is a lucky number.