About two weeks ago I was invited by some friends to join them for a visit and charity work during a Friday morning (in Libya Friday is a weekend´s day).
So I went to the Tripolis Medical Center, the biggest hospital in North-Africa.
The meeting point was the oncology-children´s department.
Have you ever been to an oncology department ?
Though I am father of three kids, I have never been and I hope I will never have to go there on a regular basis like many of the fathers and mothers that I saw this day in the Tripoli Medical Center.
What really disturbed me was to be in presence of kids who probably did not have many years of live in front of them anymore.
Pair this with the morbide environment of a big Libyan hospital, which does not have any kids-friendly attitude and you can start imagining the mood there.
The group of young Libyans from www.volunteerlibya.org bought toys and handed them to the sometimes desperate kids. I felt they especially liked the presence of other persons than the nurses and doctors which are normally surrounding them.
I took some toys from my kids, who have not been to Libya since the revolution. They were happy to know that their toys are still useful to somebody.
Some kids received their chemotherapy on the gangway, others (like the girl on the top photo) were just sleeping after they had their post-chemo shock.
I spent around two hours there, but I was not unhappy being able to leave again.
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