It was just a few months since I was told one of the most painful news in my young 16 years on planet earth.
My doctor told me that I was a diabetic.
"You will need to stop eating sweets. Take daily shots of insulin."
The doctor turned to my mom. He had the most stern expression on his face.
"Whatever you do, whatever you experiment with for a cure, please do not interrupt her insulin delivery."
Ethiopia is a deeply religious country. In the many years since that day, I have had an incredible amount of people suggest I take holy water or go to a center that would extract the disease causing devil out of me.
At first, I didn’t think much of it. I thanked them for their advice and went away. At times, I would ask my mom about the suggestions. We even tried a few of the suggestions. But thanks to the warning from my diagnosing doctor, we never interrupted my insulin delivery.
I think about how serious my doctor was when he told us. He must have witnessed so many deaths before me. I recall a movie I saw years later about a real life story. It was about a family in the US being sued for not giving their son insulin after his diagnosis.
They did the exact thing that my doctor warned us about. When the son died, the parents were on trial for gross negligence.
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter where you are born - crazy things still happen.