A Sad Awakening
by: Sharissa Leigh
One Friday morning I awoke and felt very strange. I looked down at my hands and realized I was not in my own body. I was now in the body of a child. I got up off the floor mat made of leaves I was resting on and went outside. As I walked around I saw a village of mud huts. I wondered how I got in such a place and how I transformed into someone else’s body.
Over the course of the day, I had such horrible pains in my stomach. I was so hungry. My parents seemed to provide for me the best they could. I wondered why there wasn’t someone to rescue me. I wondered why the world looked away as I was slowly fading away. I began to understand how it was to live as such a child. Despite my lack of energy, I still managed to walk four miles back and forth to fetch a pail of water for my village.
The day was so hot I felt as though I was in an inferno. As beads of sweat rolled down my face I had to now make a fire, so I could cook the rice rations that had been distributed to the village. When the rice was done cooking – everyone in the village gathered for a communal dinner. Once it was my turn to eat there was only a few bites left. My stomach felt full on such a small amount of food.
As the day progressed, I became restless. I kept wondering how I woke up in such a place. Then, I realized that many people wake up in even worse conditions than I did. I became very sad and I cried. I cried because I now knew the pain that others feel. I was so underweight and weak – yet I still managed to have hope that everything was going to get better.
My parents did the best they could to provide for me – yet due to the war and the famine –our entire village still needed help. Where were the people of the world? There was no one there to help us. How sad I had become over the course of the day. The day was done –it was now time for me to sleep. I fell asleep; I awoke in my own body, in my own bed, and now realized that it had all been just one terrible nightmare. I now knew what I had to do –I had to do my best to help the people of the world. Waking up from it all –it was a very sad awakening, but one I needed indeed.
