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["Jessica Collier" <XEWYAF msn com>]

Title: Mortgage - wintertime

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Amina looked at the sky through a hole in the tent, saw the noonday fireball, and knew that-again today-there would be no relief from the heat and the dust and the ravages of famine. She heard her mother coming home, talking with the other women who had left before sunup to search for work in exchange for food. Amina would have loved to run to greet her mother, Saty, but her little legs were too weak, so she waited patiently for her mother to come to her. 

Seeing her daughter, Saty's face lit up.
The next morning, as the women gathered for another trip into Gao, something was different. A huge cloud of dust was on the horizon, moving toward them. From the cloud a long truck with a red cross on the side appeared. Saty stared in awe as the truck wound its way toward the village. Along the way, it stopped long enough for a local volunteer interpreter to climb from the truck's cab. Saty's heart raced as the interpreter explained that the truck contained tons of food, the first shipment from the International Red Cross. Then she saw other trucks coming down the road, carrying doctors, nurses, tents and equipment. 

When Saty and Amina got to Gao early the next morning, there were already long lines. Saty hugged her sleeping child as she gazed around at all the activity. Many of the children were scared and crying. They clutched their mothers because this was the first time they had seen white people. No matter how much explaining was done about the white Red Cross delegates, the children just proceeded to cry louder. 

Scales had been set up with sling seats so the children could be weighed. The thinnest children were so fragile they had to be very carefully lifted on and off the scales. Soon it was Amina's turn. A smiling Red Cross nurse sat at a table in the tent, with an interpreter at her side. Please tell me your name, and the name of this darling little girl. I also need to know her age and where you live. 
As she gazed at her sleeping child, Saty recalled the past two years of famine, the endless wandering of the nomadic tribe to which she belonged as they desperately searched for water so there would be grass for the animals and grain for the people. But all they had found were dry wells and fields of useless wild grass. The animals starved long ago, followed by many of the tribesmen, including Saty's husband and son. When Saty's tribe arrived in Gao, a village in Mali in West Central Africa, there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so they stayed. The tribe set up their huts on the outskirts of Gao and, along with members of many other tribes who had also set up camps near Gao, tried to get work to at least feed the remaining children
Now, another Red Cross volunteer greeted Saty and Amina and walked with them to a nearby food tent. An ID bracelet was placed on Amina's wrist, and her name was added to a roster. The volunteer had seen so many wrists like Amina's today-no bigger than a walnut-belonging to a weak and listless child. He told Saty that Amina needed to show the bracelet each day as she got her allotted food. 

Waiting in line, Saty noticed the large kettles cooking over an open fire. She noticed the African women working beside people with red crosses on their clothes, helping to prepare the food
Betty picked up the ball and held it in her hand for a few minutes. Then she began moving it from one hand to the other. She walked over to the oldest boy and held the ball out for him to see. He put his hand out towards the ball, his eyes as large as saucers. Still, he wasn't sure if he should touch it. Betty stood there patiently while the other children began crowding around. Suddenly, with a big smile on her face, she tossed it up in the air and caught it. She did this several times, once letting the ball drop and bounce back to her. She held the ball out again to see if anyone would take it.