a tragedy ...

A 5 year old child was killed on the road today – crushed by a truck as she came to our AG School on her dad’s motorbike.

Her brother – also on board (normal to carry 2 or even more passengers) - was seriously injured. The father had been driving his motorbike with his kids on board – very usual – when the truck hit them. The motorbike was crushed like a toy. He escaped uninjured.

In the police compound next to the school, where the body had been delivered to lie on the dusty ground on a cloth, I hugged the father, the motorbike driver, as he collapsed, completely wrecked when he arrived from the clinic where his injured son was being treated. He later sat by the lifeless body of his daughter, relentlessly heaving with emotion as I left him to find a corner in the compound where people could not see my eyes, so I could start to release the pain I had absorbed from him. I knew none of this family before today; now I feel intimate friends with them.

This upturns all we know & think. We are truly a whisker away from eternity.

 

Multitudes of m/cycles and trucks go up & down the main Rupaidiha road daily; along with countless cycles & rickshaws - horse or cycle drawn – cars and pedestrians. They drive far too fast for safety in my humble opinion; without hyperbole it is an incredible thing to me that this kind of thing doesn’t happen several times a day … how the Lord’s mercies save us.

This is the first tragedy there has been in the life of the School. Please pray for this family. Thank you.