Before Dzaleka entered my life, helping looked familiar and safe. It meant caring at a distance-giving in ways that didn’t cost much, emotionally or otherwise. Distance, I’ve learned, is protective. It allows you to care without being changed.

That distance cracked during home visits.

Patrick walked with me through narrow paths between brick and dirt-brick homes, tin roofs overhead. Inside, people sat on dirt floors. One visit stays with me. A woman whose husband had been killed sat with her children. She spoke about them crying from hunger, about having nothing to give them. To feed them, she prostituted herself.

As she spoke, her children cried.

They were young, but they understood. They understood the cost their mother carried so they could eat. Their grief wasn’t hidden or managed-it was raw and visible, pressed close to her body. There was no space to soften what was being said, no way to protect them from knowing.

One of the children on her lap was from a man she did not know—one of the men she had slept with so her family could survive.

I didn’t know where to put that. I still don’t.

What unsettled me wasn’t only the suffering—it was the scale. People surviving on the equivalent of five dollars a month. Nearly sixty thousand people confined to a place with no real jobs, no ability to work outside the camp, no functioning economy. People telling me their children had no future. No home country. Not Malawian. Not from the land of their parents.

And alongside all of that: welcome. Smiles. Openness. A generosity of spirit I didn’t have language for. I couldn’t reconcile the depth of loss with the love I was being shown.

I began to sense that stepping closer would come at a cost.

Understanding more would mean hurting more. My comfortable life might no longer feel as comfortable. I might be asked—or ask myself-to change in ways part of me did not want to change. Staying where I was would have allowed me to avoid pain, vulnerability, and responsibility. I could have left after two weeks believing I had done some good and spared myself the burden of caring for people I would come to see as brothers and sisters, while knowing I had limited ability to help them.

There were moments I almost chose that path.

One came when people asked for my phone number. I knew what that meant. Requests. Need. Ongoing relationship. I hesitated-and then realized something simple: if I were in their place, my only hope would be to find someone willing to help me. They had every right to ask.

Another moment came months later, after I had sent money to multiple people. I saw clearly that this would not end. Their circumstances had not fundamentally changed. I had helped in crises, but the crises kept coming. Continuing would mean making hard decisions-who to help, how, and when-and accepting that this might be a lifelong relationship rather than a solvable problem.

What changed inside me before anything else changed externally was a single decision: I gave them my contact information. I allowed them to follow me home, to become part of my life. Everything else flowed from that.

What did not resolve was the burden. The burden of caring. The burden of watching people you love suffer. The burden of deciding how to help without being able to help enough. The burden of relationship.

Being closer didn’t mean fixing anything. It meant listening. Asking how people were doing. Sharing small glimpses of my own life-carefully, because the contrast was so stark. It meant trying to be present rather than useful.

What surprised me most had nothing to do with need. It was how quickly people accepted me. Loved me. Cared for me. The joy they found in the moment. The way they showed up for one another-and for me-despite everything they had endured.

Questions remain open. Will any of this change anything long term? What will these relationships look like years from now? Will I remain involved in the same way? I know I will never fully understand what it feels like to be hungry without relief, to watch your children cry because you cannot feed them, to live without a clear future.

And I may never fully understand the impact of something as small, and as costly, as being someone’s friend.

Taking one step closer did not mean fixing a problem.

It meant deciding to care.

It meant allowing myself to be vulnerable.

It meant choosing relationship over distance.

I didn’t fix anything.

I just took one step closer.