Hello…my name is Sophia Khan.

Today was a sad day.

On our first day of work, we met this darling five-year-old girl who lived two doors down from our home site. She introduced herself in English, “Hello. My name is Sophia Khan. What is your name?” She stole our hearts with her beautiful smile, energetic personality, and complete awesomeness. She spent a lot of time coming by our site and hanging out with Steven (a fellow volunteer who all the neighborhood children loved).
Last Friday, we played carnival type games with the kids and Sophia came in second place. Her mom came in first! Our team leader promised Sophia a gift on our last day for being second place.

We didn’t work on Saturday or Sunday so on Monday we were looking forward to seeing Sophia’s bright smile as we walked by. But she had already left for school. Since today is Ugadi (Telugu New Year), we knew she would be home. A few minutes prior to turning the corner onto our street, I said, “I hope we see Sophia today!” Steven was ahead of us and walked up to Sophia’s gate to show us their odd goat. Her aunt came to the gate and in Hindi told me that Sophia was gone. She then restated and said that Sophia had died. My eyes filled with tears. My fellow volunteers kept asking me, “What did she say?” So I became the bearer of bad news. I informed them that Sophia died yesterday. She was playing in the afternoon, fell off a table and hit her head. She went to the hospital where she was stable, but eventually stopped breathing. She was buried that night.

We all stood around her gate and cried for what seemed like forever. Charly, our team leader came by and we informed him as well. The shocked look on his face was unbearable. He has a child close to Sophia’s age. We left her house with heavy hearts to continue the work we came to do.

Before we began work, we decided to pray for her soul. We cried and hugged and pushed forward. Charly wanted to separate us today so we could help other homes, but knew we couldn’t bear it. So instead, we began building our family a kitchen and bathroom. It was a quiet workday.

As we began to depart for lunch, Sophia’s mother arrived. She came walking over to us. This vibrant young woman, who couldn’t possibly be older than me, now looked as if she were 50. Since I’m the only one who speaks Hindi in our group, she walked over to me repeating, “Sophia’s dead, Sophia’s dead.” I didn’t have to translate the tears. We all held her, which was definitely out of her cultural norm, but she gratefully accepted our condolences. We met Sophia’s father today, but he is a man of little words.

Today was a sad day.