Baby for Sale.

Sitting on the massive balcony of our new apartment. It overlooks much of the city – little tin huts surrounded by jungle and burning garbage, ocean in the background. There is a Harmattan wind coming from the north and it sweeps the dust up over the houses and hangs there. It absorbs the humidity that normally makes life unbearable for we gringos and despite the fog-like thickness of this motionless "wind" I can watch the sun set over the ocean.

Listening to a playlist I made years ago called "Music to Inspire You." It contains some Markey, The Beatles, M, Sting, Matmatah, Manu Chao, and other intoxicated, musically-inclined geniuses who used music to command for higher responsibility from governments, preached for adequate protection of the underprivileged, and sand a whole lot of demands to the capitalist society buying their records and paying for their lobster dinners. Mixed in the list are a few love songs that croon about sad girls going both ways on a one-way street. Despite those, the list is truly uplifting and I used to listen to it when my homework overwhelmed me and I felt tempted to put up the much-awaited White Flag which, despite everything, I never did. And now here I am in my apartment in Freetown, Sierra Leone, watching the sun set over the houses and jungle and ocean, a pile of documents devoted to children's rights sitting next to me. I have been inspired by more than music but the tunes certainly make a nice backdrop for a life that I find truly inspiring.

There are down points though. There are things that I am learning to handle with difficulty. Things that people told me to expect, things that I prepared myself for, things that I researched and mentally lectured myself about prior to my trip… but that nonetheless cause me to double over with panic and nausea upon their realization. Years ago I would have kicked myself for my naiveté, for not having been adequately prepared, for not having the proper reactions thoroughly engrained in me. For being so weak and foolish. Today, instead of just acknowledging that I am an obsessively emotional person (something that has been impossible to ignore) I am actually allowing myself to just accept that and know that there are some emotions you simply can't prepare for in advance.

I could not, for example, imagine what would be my real-life reaction to be offered someone's child. Alex had warned me that it would happen, that women would try to hand me their children. I laughed and we chatted about how I would be coming back from Sierra Leone with babies in tow. Mike and I giggled in hushed tones over the phone about how many children we were going to adopt during our stay. I warned Mike that if it happened that I were offered a child he should be wary – I would say yes. We laughed, we giggled, we sighed. "That's so tragic," we would say, casually discussing the desperation of women who would do such things, and then we would change the subject. When I was actually offered the child a woman because she could not feed or house it, I actually did laugh.

She was selling bananas and asked me my name. Oh hi Anna how are you. When I would not buy bananas she turned to the baby sitting on the stone wall next to her, patted her on the head and said, "You want this?"

I guffawed. I laughed a sick, nervous titter. "Your baby?" I asked incredulously. "You want to give me your baby? No, no, I can't take your baby."

There was a crowd around us (there is always a crowd) and they also laughed. The woman insisted, gesticulating as she spoke. Putting her hand to her mouth, she explained: "No food." She clasped her palms, tipped her head to the side and placed her hands next to her ear. "No got sleep, no room." Her baby cannot eat and has nowhere to sleep.

I stood there dumb, my frozen smile fading with the strangest sense of numbness. What do you say to a woman who has a child she cannot feed and cannot house when she is asking you for help? How do you live in a house with air-conditioning and electricity (albeit sparse), walk around with a cell phone in your purse, discuss at night the idea of going to The Gambia with your boyfriend for Christmas and still say: No, I will not help you or your baby. I will not give your baby a "better home," even though the alternative is extreme poverty and a 50% chance of dying of malaria (for which I have medication in my purse right now.) I will not give your baby a chance to wear clean clothes, eat regularly, have access to health care and gain an education (since I know that your other kids don't go to school at all because the $1.33- a-month-tuition-charge is too expensive.) I will not take your baby, sorry. Thanks anyway.

I eventually mustered out these words: "I'll see what I can do." I slowly turned and went on my way. Profoundly affected by this exchange and terrified at the idea of returning and walking past the woman five minutes later with no solution, my trembling hands reached into my purse (there's no way that woman has a purse) and pulled out my cellphone (or a cellphone) and called my boyfriend to announce my change in plans. "Uh hi, yeah, I need a beer."

I had been prepared for this to happen. I know that it would even though I haven't actually heard of any of the expats here experiencing it. As a white woman I am considered a) extremely wealthy, and since I regularly play with children in the street I am apparently seen as b) somebody who would probably be an okay caretaker. I can see how a woman suffering from extreme poverty would reach such desperation that she would rather give up her child to a stranger on the street than watch it (and she herself) suffer. I just really thought that maybe I'd have some kind of solution by the time the situation arose. How's that for naivety.

Instead, I walk past her and her child every day on the way to my air-conditioned apartment, cellphone in my purse, and think about Christmas in the Gambia, miracle-solution nowhere in sight.