1/7/10 - Clinic/Home Visits/Orphanage

Yesterday was such an exhausting day…we were all very tired this morning. We had about 20 more patients left over form yesterday to see, so Dr. Sams and Dr. Bunge worked on that while Chris worked on some procedures. I watched Chris and, once again, was so very proud of him. He’s good! He really knows what he’s doing. It’s nice to know that even after 6 years of marriage, he still impresses his wife! Ha! He drained fluid off of a man’s knee and removed an implant from a woman’s arm. I watched both procedures and took pictures without a problem. After the arm procedure was finished, however, I suddenly felt very light headed and had to sit down. It’s not for the faint hearted, for sure. Chris had a patient today who told him that her 7 year old daughter had fallen and broken her arm in November. It was so bad that it required surgery to reset it. When it was time for her release from the hospital, however, the mother could not pay, so the hospital is refusing to release the girl! Isn’t that incredible? Every day she stays, the bill goes higher. They have been known, we’re told, to hold patients for 3 years or more. One translator even said that sometimes they finally just withhold food from the patients until they die. So sad! Chris sent someone from the Hope Center to the hospital to verify this story and sure enough, it is true! It is going to take $500 USD to get this child home with her mother. We brought it before the rest of the group, hoping that we could raise enough money to get this child out of the hospital. And yet it’s only one child. I wonder how many more are out there… After we finished seeing patients, Chris and I went our separate ways. He went deep into the slums on home visits, whereas I went to the orphanage. Chris saw some amazing things. He said he’d write a post on that (including the woman who had been locked in her house while she was sleeping, had the house doused with kerosene and lit on fire. Luckily someone heard her screaming so she got out, but is covered in 3rd degree burns and may not even live, the fish market on a table by the ground right next to a flowing river of sewage and flies, and two parents who had AIDS). So since he’ll go into more detail about that, I will tell you about my experience at the orphanage. I have always wanted to work in Africa in an orphanage, so it was very important to me to get to one while I was here. In my mind, I guess I expected to see 1or 2 ladies in a room full of screaming babies. What I found was much different from that. It was a welcome respite from the extreme poverty and neglect we had been seeing. It was beautiful, clean, and there were so many workers that I actually felt like I might be in the way! The children were loved. They were ere clean and smelled so good. And they were so happy and well-adjusted. They were so happy to sit in your lap an sing and play. I was amazed. It was so lovely. And I came away feeling a strange dilemma; one that broke my heart: If I were a mother in the Kilamgari Slums, could I keep my child with me while knowing what a lovely life he could have in the orphanage? Is it better to have a mother and father and live in extreme poverty and filth and disease in an unsafe place, or live in a safe place that is clean where they regularly receive medical care and are loved by the many people who work there? I’m still not sure of the answer. What a terrible quandary to face. As we left, it was time for the kids to come outside and play. So they ran after us all the way to the gat and stuck their little faces and hands out of the bars and watched us go. It is a picture that I think will be stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. I just wish we could help them all. Beautiful, sweet, loving children who need a mommy and daddy to love them.