The dust that settles on the text message

Dear Delyara, The battery on my phone is dying, just like the solar light outside my clinic tent. I am a thirty-four-year-old pediatrician from Munich, volunteering out here where the red dust gets into everything—your water, your hair, your conscience. My sister back home sent me a video of my nephew’s first steps three weeks ago. I haven't replied. I was too busy watching a mother hold a child whose fever wouldn't drop because our antibiotic shipment was stuck at the border customs. I feel this sickening, hollow guilt rotting my stomach. I am saving strangers' children while my own family forgets the sound of my voice. I am losing my youth in the dry bush, and I don't even know if the sacrifice is real or just my own selfish pride.