Saturday, November 29, 2008

Night at the hospital...

I sit in the hospital room, watching Linda color a book with the crayons that I brought. She sits in a white metal hospital crib with one side pulled down all the way. I’m sitting in a lawn chair next to the crib, looking around the room or at Linda, especially when a cough or funny sound comes from her.

In the room there are seven beds, five of them are twin size beds, two of them cribs. All the twin beds are occupied, three with mothers and their children and the other with a grandmother and her granddaughter. One crib is occupied by Linda, the other one empty. It, based on what the nurse just suggested (well more like demanded of me!), will probably house me in a little while as my bed…once the eyelids get heavy.

It’s now 9:00pm and most of the moms and the grandmother are sleeping. There is one mother and her son who are still awake. The mother tells me that her son, Kiprop, is suffering a bad chest cold. He can’t get comfortable and is constantly coughing and gasping for air. His mother is trying to be patient but loses it from time to time by “clicking” at him (which is a not so nice thing here – shows and relays that you’re annoyed or angry with the person) or tells him sternly to “BE QUIET!!”

I ask Linda if she is tired; she says yes. I have her lie down and pull the blanket up to her chin. I tuck her in nice and tight, kiss her all over the face and say good night. She laughs and then snuggles in to her blanket and closes her eyes.

Four minutes later, the silence in the room is broken by a nurse and her cart. She has come to do the evening medication run for the children. Her bedside manners definitely need quite a bit of tweaking. Another nurse comes in; I like her. She’s really nice and gentle with the children; she even calls Linda “sweetie”. Perhaps because I’m there but she’s nice to all the others too. The mothers and grandmother spend the next few minutes pulling out the medication and medical “chart” (which is more like a piece of paper) of their children.

Here, the parents/guardians are responsible to buy all necessary medication and equipment (i.e. needles, IV necessities, etc.) they are also responsible to bring/buy their own bed sheets, blankets, cups and eating utensils for overnight stays. Nothing, except the bed, the mattress and the nurses/doctors is supplied by the hospitals.

I watch the nurse hook a bag full of blood on the wall and connect the IV into the little boy on the bed next to Linda. He’s no more than two years old and I was told that he doesn’t have enough blood in his body so they need to give him blood. Two other mothers come over to watch the blood drip from the bag, through the IV and into the boy’s hand. They talk with the mother as he fights to get comfortable and is a bit upset of the pain of the IV needle.

As the nurses are getting ready to leave, the grandmother with her granddaughter stands up in the middle of the room and starts shouting/singing and then begins doing an African dance. Linda bursts out laughing; what a beautiful laugh (and it helps to drown out the sound of the screaming baby down the hall). The grandmother entertains for about 30 seconds, then sighs, and crawls back into her and her granddaughter’s bed, under the mosquito net and drifts off to sleep.

Linda is now wide awake. She starts gibbering off in Swahili to me. With hand jesters between the two of us and the Swahili that I know, we actually communicate very well. She shows me her IV needle in her hand, although there’s no IV attached to her now. She says she doesn’t like it and it hurts too much.

Now it’s 9:25pm and Linda is hungry again. Just two hours ago, she ate a chicken leg with roasted potatoes. This is a great sign – having her appetite back. I give her about two mouthfuls of my Coke. She likes the fact that we’re sharing my Coke with each other she then asks for her bread and starts to dip her bread in to her Coke. I make a grossed out look on my face and we both burst into laughter.

The little boy, Kiprop, at this point is very fussy. He’s whining and coughing uncontrollably. It sounds likes he’s coughing up his lungs and on the verge of vomiting. His mother is getting impatient and frustrated; she’s tired and just wants to go to sleep. She raises her voice at him but she seems to fail in realizing that the louder and more frustrated she gets, the more upset he becomes and the worse his whining and coughing are. My heart breaks for him.

Linda is now done dipping her bread in to her Coke. I remove the cup and bag of bread from her bed. She wants to go to sleep now so I tightly tuck her back under the blanket and cover her with kisses and say good night to the sound of her laughter.

In the distance, I can hear chanting. It quite possibly could be a number of people praying in unison. I don’t go to check it out; I instead stay and wait for Linda to fall asleep.

It’s now 10:00pm and Linda has fallen asleep quite quickly. I decide to get ready for bed and make a last trip to the not-so-clean toilet and hopefully off to sleep I can go.

As I head to the toilet, I realize that the chanting that I hear is mothers and grandmothers singing softly in the next ward. When I walk by again, they are now praying; the prayers are loud, powerful and some very tearful.

A few minutes later, the prayers have stopped; the only sounds in our room are now Linda’s breathing and a few whining noises from Kiprop and the snoring of his mother.

About ten minutes later, Kiprop’s whining increases into tears of pain and discomfort. He cried through is tears, “Mama! Mama!” She curses at him once and then I hear her snoring again. Again Kiprop says, “Mama! Mama!” over and over again. I go over to console him but then the mother looks over and seems me coming toward them so she pulls out her breast and puts it to his mouth to feed. It quiets him for about three minutes where he then begins again. His mother is furious at this point and some of the others in the room are getting a bit agitated. She clicks at him, tells him to shut up and then ignores him.

I hear Linda toss a bit in the bed; I look over and thankfully she stays asleep despite Kiprop’s whining and calling out to his mother. Kiprop is now sobbing and in between the sobs, he’s gasping for air and then coughing. His mother clicks at him, telling him be quiet and goes back to sleep. This happens over and over again. When I hear she’s snoring and out like a light and he’s still whining, I go over to their bed and kneel down in front of him. I start to rub his cheek, his face and his head. He immediately calms down, and moves his head in the motion of my hand…harder into my hand to feel my touch against his face. He actually begins to close his eyes and starts to fall asleep. I gently lay him down next his mother. He’s quiet and falls asleep.

I can feel the cold night air coming in through the glassless window door that separates us from the outside. Linda has three blankets; one as a pillow, one underneath her and one over top of her and I’m not about to steal any of her blankets. I’ll just put on my sweatshirt and socks…that should work.

I thinks its now bedtime. I crawl in to the crib (a little small but the fetal position always works!) but no sleep right away.

It’s around 11:40pm and Linda wakes up and looks in the direction I was sitting in when she fell asleep. When she doesn’t see me there, panic strikes her voice as she loudly says my name, “Mary!” I say “I’m here!” in Swahili. She turns her head around and literally sighs out loud and then smiles. I ask her if she’s okay and she says she needs the toilet. We get out of our cribs and head to the toilet. The big, main ward, the one we’re not in, smells of urine and vomit. Most of the room is quiet, except for some little crying from children and snoring from mothers or grandmothers. There are a few people awake; just sitting there but somewhere in the back beds, I hear a woman singing to her child.

I bring Linda back to bed, do the routine of tucking her in tightly, cover her with kisses and say goodnight. She falls asleep almost instantly. What an angel!

It’s 2:19am now and I just suddenly got woken by a loud and long scream. I’m looking around the room to confirm that it’s none of us in our ward. I hear women start to sing and pray. The scream turns into sobbing. I wonder if a child has just lost his/her life. As I too say a prayer, tears fall down my face and I drift off to very light sleep.

Wow, I’m not sleeping much. I look at my cell phone; it reads 3:23am. I hear Linda rustling around under her blanket and making a moaning noise. I think she’s having a nightmare. Linda bolts up in bed and calls, “Mary, Mary!” in a panic. She is looking in the opposite direction that I’m sleeping in. I jump out of the crib and say in Swahili, “Linda, I’m here! It’s okay.” I rub her head, give her a kiss and she lies back down. I sit beside her for a moment, rubbing her head until she falls back to sleep. I then crawl back in to my crib.

It’s now 5:15am. I might as well get up, as I’m up at 5:00am every weekday morning anyway. I crawl out of crib and notice that some of the mothers are starting to stir in their beds too. The noise in the hallways is increasing as people all around our section are starting to wake up also. I pull out the chair and sit next to Linda’s bed.

It’s 7:00am and our social worker, Anne, arrives to relieve me from Linda’s bedside, although I realize that I don’t really want to go. I want to stay with her…we’ve had fun. Its a few minutes later and Linda wakes up. She’s definitely not a morning person. She’s very quiet and non-expressive. It’s quite funny to watch her this way.

Anne goes and gets some water and gives her a quick sponge bath in the bed and rubs her face, arms and legs with smearing oil (aka: Vaseline – it keeps their skin soft and smooth).

After a few minutes, I say good-bye to Linda. I need to go home and get some sleep. She asks if I will come back and visit her. “Of course I will come back. I love you Linda.” She smiles at me, a big beautiful smile. I’ll take that as an “I love you too.” : )

****************

On Thursday, November 20th, Linda was released from the hospital. She returned to HBF and so far, so good. She is doing AMAZINGLY well, her appetite is back and she’s laughing along with the other kids.

Monday, November 17, 2008

A Day Full of Questions....

There are moments when I question all I have been taught, all that I have believed in. There are times when I don’t have a single clue as to why things happen the way they do and when they do. There are days when I just want to throw in the towel and say, “what the hell am I doing here?”

On Saturday, Daniel took our visitor Theresa, along with our social worker Anne, on an assessment. It was in the same area as our children’s home, Hope Bright Future (HBF), where the rest of us were, playing with our children, as per every Saturday.

Daniel and the crew arrived back at HBF but they brought with them two little girls: Stella, twelve years old and her extremely sick younger sister, Linda, seven years old. Daniel was carrying Linda in his arms; she looked so ill. I immediately went over to Stella and introduced myself to her, wrapped my arms around her and had her sat beside me. We talked for a few minutes before she went off to play with the other children at the home.

Daniel told me their story.

The grandmother had abandoned the girls a few weeks back. Some people in the community had made a child neglect complaint against the grandmother to the area chief (similar to a town councilor). The area chief summoned the grandmother and when she arrived, her response to the area chief, “I don’t care. Let them die.”

Let them die? My heart sank. Who could do that? Who could leave a twelve year old alone with her very sickly younger sister? I was angry; I was sad; I was broken.

We looked at Linda’s frail body; malnutrition was definitely there. There were sores on her body; her eyelashes curled up, showing signs of severe dehydration. She was in and out of the awareness of her surroundings. Daniel immediately gave her fluids to try to get some hydration back in to her.

I sat with her for awhile; I asked her if she was tired and she nodded her head yes, so I took her to the girl’s room to lie down. All of us “white people” went in to the girl’s room, sat around her on the bed and began to pray for her. What we prayed, I don’t really recall at this moment…but I know that we all felt emotion. We all felt an overwhelming sadness in what we saw lying there on the bed.

Fast forward to today….

Anne, our social worker is meeting Zipporah (the manager of HBF) and Linda at the hospital today. Linda is getting checked out and a possible HIV test….

A bunch of us went for lunch today. When Lauren S and I arrived at the restaurant, I saw friends of ours: Jeff and Carla. They run a baby’s home for abandoned or orphaned babies. When I saw Carla, she was carrying a little boy named Teddy. His mother abused and then abandoned him quite a few months back. The children’s department got Teddy and handed him over to Jeff and Carla’s ministry. The mother was in prison for the abuse and abandonment but somehow, some judge who must’ve been smoking crack that day, allowed the mother custody of Teddy again. She started raising him….IN PRISON. Shortly thereafter, Teddy got sick and so he was taken to the district hospital. It was then that the mother, receiving a hospital bill that she of course could not afford, said that the baby could return to the children’s department and back to Jeff and Carla.

I immediately swooped Teddy in to my arms and held on to me. We made kissy lips at each other; I did blow farts on his face; he nuzzled in to my neck. We were really a good match for each other. :-) Then Carla said, “Come, meet the newbies.” So we went around the corner and there at one of the tables were two little kids. One I knew for sure was a girl, the other, I wasn’t too sure about (later finding out it was a boy with the possible name of Jackson). Jeff and Carla had picked up these two kids today. The girl, not knowing her name, was a cute chubby little thing, the brother, Jackson, was not at all healthy looking. He looked to be about eight months old but based on the teeth in his mouth; he was probably closer to the age of two, similar to his sister’s age.

As the story was told, the father of the children had chased away the mother and then shortly after, abandoned his two children. The girl was strong enough to walk around and leave the house on her own so the neighbours would care for her, give her food and tea….but never knowing that there was a little boy in the house.

He is your typical World Vision looking kid, the extremely scrawny arms, rib cage protruding from his skin and a bulged out belly. I handed Teddy to Lauren S for a moment and picked up Jackson. He immediately cuddled in to my neck and got as close to my skin as he could. The denial and wanting affection was so evident in this little boy. I looked at his sad little face and again was overcome with emotions of anger, sadness and brokenness.

We ended up holding Teddy and Jackson all through our lunch. I thought it was because I wanted to give Carla a break but in actuality, I just wanted a baby to hold, a baby that I could smother complete affection on and cover in kisses.

After our lunch and busy afternoon of shopping and putting the groceries away, I started doing some accounting work. I got a call from Anne…

They’ve admitted Linda in to the hospital. She has severe malaria, severe pneumonia and yes, tested positive for HIV. All the questions started flooding my mind. The question why came up again and again in my head. I lost it. I sat on the chair and burst in to tears. Sean immediately came over and let me cry on his shoulder.

A mother abuses and abandons her child twice. A father abandons his children; one on the brink of starvation. A grandmother says she doesn’t care if her grandchildren die. Who are these people? How could they do this?

I am at a loss of words and at the moment at a loss of hope. When does it end? When does a child stop suffering? I don’t know what else to say right now…my heart is too broken, my words don’t make sense and my mind is all over the place.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sharing My Story...

I want to share this story with you because I want to share the children’s questions, the children’s views on things here. But to share this story with you means I need to share a little bit more of myself with some of you who don’t know. So here it goes…

Four of our interns, Andrew, Nate, Andrea and Lauren S, go to a primary school that is located on the outskirts of a slum, just 5 minutes from our compound. They go to the school twice a week, after school is done and talk with six, seven and eighth graders. They’ve touched on topics such as Christianity, puberty, and sex.

This past Tuesday, the topic for the day’s discussion was rape. I was asked to come and speak to the students, to share my story, my struggles and my forgiveness from my rape that happened over 15 years ago.

When I started to tell them that I had been raped, some kids laughed. I asked why they thought something of a serious nature would be funny to them. They didn’t answer so I gave some thoughts as to why they thought it was humorous. The reason: they never thought bad things happened to white people.

I told them that 1 out of every 4 women in North America are raped. Therefore, out of the three of us white women at the front of the class; I was that one that had been raped. It shocked them.

I spoke at times, directly to the boys. “When a girl says no, you MUST listen to her. You MUST respect her no and not push her further or force yourself upon her.” I could see snickers on some of their faces. In a culture where in many places are still old school traditions, the men are still superior to women, the men still have control of women, the men can take whatever they want from women…some of these boys still lived in that warped existence.

I asked the boys who had sisters to raise their hand. Almost all the boys raised their hands. I then asked the boys who had mothers to raise their hand; again almost all the boys raised their hands. Then I said, “Picture your sister coming home, crying, bleeding, beaten, with torn clothes and she tells you that she has been raped. Picture it.” The boys grow quiet. “When your sister tells you this, are you happy? Are you happy to hear that she has been raped?” All the boys say no. I said, “Are you angry? Very angry at what just happened to your sister?” They all shout, “Yes!!” I said, “Are you so angry that they did this to your sister, that you want to go and beat them?” “YES!!!” They shout.

Then I say it. “Now remember boys, the next time you want to force yourself upon a girl, remember that she is somebody’s sister.” You could hear a pin drop in the room.

After sharing my story, I opened it up for questioning for the whole group: boys and girls. At first, similar questions were asked: “Were you angry with him?”, “How long did it take you to forgive him?” “Were you afraid that you could be pregnant?” and so on.

One of the first questions from a boy was, “Can boys also be raped?” And the look on his face was so serious, so sad. “Absolutely!” I said, “And it’s no less scary or wrong for a man to be raped as it is for woman.”

Another boy asked me the name of the person who had raped me. I wouldn’t tell them. I knew that this question was going to be asked and I had prepared an answer for when it was asked. I wouldn’t give the name out because I wanted to respect any boy in that room that could have the same name. I knew that if I had told them, they would all immediately point and laugh at the boy in the class who had the same name (if there was even a boy with the same name) and I didn’t want to cause embarrassment to someone that had nothing to do with my story. The students agreed that they would’ve done that and I’m sure all the boys were thankful for me not releasing the name, dreading that it may be their name.

After awhile, we separated the boys and girls. The boys left with Andrew and Nate to discuss more in-depth questions that may be awkward for them to ask in front of the girls. Andrea, Lauren and I stayed to talk with the girls and some of the most difficult questions were asked to me. With almost every question asked, I had to take a silent moment and ask God for wisdom. Without Him, I don’t think I would’ve been able to answer some of them.

Here is a list of some of the questions:

  1. After you wrote him the letter forgiving him, did he contact you? Are you two friends now?
  2. What if you’re raped and he gives you HIV/AIDS from the rape? How can you forgive him for ruining the rest of your life?
  3. What do you do if you’re raped and you get pregnant and you have the child and the child looks like the man who raped you and you hate that child because it reminds you of the rape?
  4. How can you know if a baby has been raped?
  5. How can you tell if a girl has been raped?
  6. What do you do to get rid of the sadness that’s inside of you if you have been raped?
  7. What should you do if you are raped?
  8. Are women in North America raped by their fathers or other men that they know?

There were so many questions; all of them valid; all of them asked with extreme seriousness. I looked around the room and saw in to some of their girl’s eyes. I could see the sadness; I could see the pain; I could see the rape victims. And it broke me.

I went through a time in my life, after the rape, where I was angry with God. I blamed Him, asked Him, “Why didn’t you save me? Why didn’t you stop it?” Back in 2001, God gave me the reason. He showed me the verse 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

I believe that God can take every bad situation that happens and turn it in to something good. And talking to those kids, especially the girls, on Tuesday about my story, sharing my pain, my thoughts, my healing and my suggestions to them, helped some of them. Even if it only helped one girl, then it was all worth it. When a girl or woman that I know has been raped, I am thankful that I am reminded of the pain that I went through because I know how to comfort and pray for those girls and women.

A few years back, I decided to work with God rather than fight Him and take the something bad and make it something good. It’s amazing how wonderful it really feels.