Just say no

So, we've arrived here in Cotonou, Benin, and the work has begun. It is good to be here, and I am excited for the work I am doing. I am working as the eye field team coordinator, which means that I drive to different areas of town and help to organize mobile eye clinics that are held each week. Surgeries started today. We had 600 patients waiting for us yesterday, and 400 today. My crowd control skills are weak, at best, and my French is about 10 levels below that, not to mention my Fon speaking (the most common local dialect). Today we had to go to a window one floor above where the hundreds of patients were waiting, just in order to speak to them and try to gain some order (Shakespeare comes to mind...).
Despite all the stress and pressure of seeing so many people, I have a joy in the work we are doing. I have often worried that I was suffering compassion fatigue, and could easily "just say no" to people, when I would watch the hearts of other staff around me be wrenched and tortured. Today my heart was moved deeply, for one young man who had an infection that the ship simply could not treat, and I felt forced to turn him away, toward what I saw as inevitable, impending death. My heart ached, and I broke down and shed tears for him, as Pastor Florent and I prayed for him, and we sent him away. They simply couldn't pay for x-rays and treatment. It's hard for me even to conceive of. Lack of money causing someone's death. Obviously, it happens every day, and yet it's shocking. It does not often happen in the world I know. The realities we know in life can differ so greatly. I could only pray that God would intervene on this man's behalf, and show him mercy. Then I had to go see the next patient.