Wednesday, November 26, 2008

We were cruising down the dusty dirt road, swerving and bouncing over potholes. All of us were laughing and talking, our early Thanksgiving dinner still heavy in our stomachs. I was sitting right behind the driver's seat, playing music on our laptop while discussing various bands and singers with my parents and sister.

I heard my mom yell and I clutched the computer as my dad slammed on the brakes. The sound of our car horn filled my ears as we skidded forward, our wheels locked. I looked up through the windshield to see a pair of t-shirt clad shoulders smash into the glass with a dull, heart-stopping crunch. The man's head cracked into the already smashed glass as his bicycle flipped under the car.

My dad leapt out of the now stopped car and ran over to the man, who leapt to his feet and immediately started demanding money. The rest of us in the car breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God for his amazing grace.

My dad took the man to the police station, where there was much argumentation over what really happened. The man seemed convinced that we had tried to kill him. One of the police officers said, "If that man had wanted to kill you, he would have killed you properly!"As it turns out, he got away with a large bruise and a scratch.

His bicycle and our windshield were not so lucky.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

All of the white people I have observed driving will firmly grab the stick shift and thrust it back and forth by the top of the handle, jarring the car into whatever gear he or she thinks most necessary at that point in time. While watching our ambulance driver, I noticed that he gently cradles the side of the handle in his hand, and only grips it firmly when he is changing gears. Even then, however, he will keep his hand on the side, never resting his palm on the top of the stick shift.

It was on the way to Tokora hospital with a handful of sick babies and their various parents in the back of our Land Rover that I made this comparison. I was going to visit little Lomongin at the hospital where he had been transferred. I hadn't been to the hospital since we arrived in Karamoja in 2000, eight years ago.

We pulled up outside of a large, one-story building. I was surprised to see many patients lying outside on mats or blankets. The nurse from our clinic, Abura, explained, "They want to be outside".

I inquired as to the whereabouts of Lomongin, but was surprised and delighted to hear that he had been discharged. The woman at the desk refused to specify, but she said his condition was determined 'stable'. Whether he was discharged on hospice or not I don't know. I can only hope he had recovered enough to not need the care of the hospital.

The nurse from our clinic, Abura, gave me a tour of the hospital. We visited the pediatric ward. It was all empty, save one tiny baby lying on a bed, a quinine drip attached to his head. His mother sat next to him, and Abura asked her some questions about the time the baby had been on the drip, where they were from, etc. That gave me time to take pictures of the hospital's caved-in roof, the mosquito nets held up by sticks tied to the beds, and the many mattress-less beds.

We then ventured to the maternity ward, in which there was a door off to the side with a clumsy sign written on a scrap of posterboard in marker:
LAUBOR ROOM

( I didn't spell that wrong)

There were only two women in the room, one of whom was talking animatedly with someone outside in what sounded like a Southwestern Ugandan dialect. The other was a young Karimojong girl who sat, staring out the window. I remembered what one of my Karimojong friends had told me - "They send you to Tokora to die."

This girl obviously seemed to believe that.

We went on to visit the men's ward. It was relatively full compared to the other two. For every man in a bed, there was a wife and young child on the floor next to them. One man, wrapped entirely in a blanket, was sitting with his back to me. I thought he must be a young boy or something, for his head and neck were unusually slim for a fully grown man.

As he turned around, I realized that I was terribly wrong.

Bloodshot eyes stared out at me from a ghastly skull-like face. His cheeks were completely sunken in so that the cheekbones jutted out like knives. He raised a hand in greeting, and I saw that it was literally skin and bone, every phalanx visible in horrible detail.

I was so disturbed by his appearance that it took me a while to muster up the courage to speak to him. I greeted him and walked cautiously over to his bed. As I reached his bedside, I glanced down and noticed a tiny little baby lying wrapped up in a blanket on the floor next to him. I asked, "Is this your child?"

He said yes, she was.

I asked her name.

His hollow eyes glowed with love, and a smile creased the skin stretched across his face. "Tiyan", he whispered "Tiyan."

We talked some more and I told him I would pray for him. He thanked me and I left, feeling a horrible empty sadness for the man and his tiny daughter.

I visited the hospital again today and no one could tell me where he was. Someone else was in his bed, and there was no sign of him or his daughter anywhere.
It was about 2:59 pm. I was sitting in my room on the computer, listening to my ipod while typing an email. It had been another "grueling" day at the clinic. I took another sip of my home-brewed vanilla latte, and while doing so glanced at the clock and noticed that I was almost late.

A few minutes later I was running out the door, dressed in my 'village skirt', heading for the main compound to pick up the pictures for the bible study at the largest village in our area, Moru Athia. I walked down the dusty path, greeting all who passed, and, whether or not I had ever seen them before in my life, they all knew my name. I splashed and kicked through the gleaming river which had run over the road, then slipped and skidded through some of the muddier parts of the path.

As I reached the turn off of the main road onto the dirt path, I saw a few of my faithful attendees at the borehole, pumping til their jerrycans overflowed full of preciously clean water. There was a tiny little girl at the pump, leaping up and down to give the handle the momentemum it needed to bring forth the water. It was an unmercifully hot day, with the sun beating it's whiplike rays down on my Caucasian skin. I asked her if I could have some water. She grinned from ear to ear, nodding frantically, and jerked the creaky handle up and down with renewed vigor. I gathered up some of the gleaming water in one hand and splashed it over my face, then proceeded to drink my fill.

In return, I carried her jerrycan - overflowing with every step - back to the village. As we walked, we accumulated an admiring crowd of shepherd boys, girls on their way back from the borehole, and sheep. As we neared the village, I noticed a crowd of men in intense discussion by a tree outside of the village. At first glance, it seemed an important meeting of some sort. At second glance - a card game.

We walked through the village, calling the usual, "Potu akilip! Ngidwe daadang!" or "Come for prayers! All the children!" The enthusiatic kids soon joined in the calling, and some of the older ones ran into homes and came back out carrying little children. I started humming one of our praise songs, "Potu Ikinyariatae" (Come, You Are Called), and a few of the children started picking it up. Pretty soon our single-file line was belting out the catchy song, marching through the convoluded dirt-and-cowpie path until we came out the opposite side of the village to a large tamarind tree, our customary meeting place.

We continued singing as more and more children poured out of the village, little girls hitching up their skirts as they ran, while boys grasped their blankets and walking sticks, all making valiant attempts to keep their clothing about them. Finally, when I asked if they would like to sing some more or have the story, they chose the latter.

This week's feature was 'Joseph Gets Sold into Slavery'. They loved Joseph's coat, and one of the shepherd boys jokingly asked me where he could get a blanket like that one of Joseph. When Joseph's brothers threw him into the pit, there was much sympathetic shaking of heads and quiet 'tsk tsk's. Overall, they did rather well for a crowd of about eighty kids sitting on top of eachother amidst heaps of jagged stone, swatting the plentiful flies that crowded their sweaty faces.

Then it was vitamin time. A while ago, we started handing out vitamins for good behavior, and they soon became a regular part of the bible study routine. The kids call them "etamtam", which means "sweets" or candy in their language. (originally from Kiswahili decent - etamu-tamu = sweet-sweet) Unfortuately, this week we were about forty sweets short. So one of the older boys and I broke each one into at least three pieces and handed them out to the mob of frantic children. Once they were gone, I gave the empty bottle to the aforesaid older boy who had been exceedingly helpful in crowd control. He was completely ecstatic.

As my translator and I walked back down the pebbly maram road, I noticed one of the children from my bible study sitting by the road a little way off, obviously collapsing with fatigue. He stood up and picked up a gunny sack half-full of maize and lifted it to his head, staggering under the weight. We caught up with him and relieved him of his burden by transferring it to the top of my head. Pretty soon he was skipping along next to me, clutching my sweaty hand in his, a gap-toothed smile adorning his face. All the skipping made it even harder for me to balance the precarious bundle, which was leaking the occasional kernel out of it's loosely tied opening.

We finally got the troublesome corn to 'emachine', the grinding mill. Every eye in the place was staring at the white girl trying to carry a ridiculously small amount of maize on her head. I set it on the ground next to the child, whose tiny chest was puffed out with pride as he slowly looked around to make sure everyone knew that the emusugut girl had carried his maize for him. I shook hands with a few people, then hitchhiked back home on our mission ambulance just as the sun began to hang a deep yellow over the horizon.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

I was just finishing up my work at the clinic - tallying receipts, recording drug orders - when a family came rushing in. The sweat pouring down their faces told me that they had run a long way, and as I took their medical book, I saw that they had run for about two miles, from a place called Alamacar (the c makes a 'ch' sound). The mother of the family was carrying a child of about eight on her back, tied on with a dirty blanket. They were all hysterical and out of breath. I asked, "Is this the sick child?"

The father answered an emphatic, "Yes, he's very sick! Please, help us, he can't move his neck, he's very sick..."

I froze. A stiff neck is the sign of a critical case of meninghitis. I looked at the child, who was grimacing with pain, and, though he was hanging precariously from his mother's back, was holding his head straight upright.

I checked them in and let them go on, then finished tallying up the receipts, including one for the child's IV medicine. I got up to leave, and noticed one of the nurses tying on a mask around his mouth and nose. This confirmed my theory of the child's condition, so I walked over to the hallway between the pharmacy and the nurses' offices that serves as our ER.

The family - his father, mother, brother, aunt and baby cousin - was crowded around the child, who was still wrapped in the ragged blanket and lying on the table. The nurse was preparing an IV carefully, and stepped forwards, blocking my view, so I ventured around the back of the pharmacy, so as to come around the other side.

It was then that it hit me. I walked over to one of the many staff members who was relaxing against the sink for cleaning slides and asked, "Do you think it would be okay if I prayed with them?

He said, "Yes, that would be very good."

I walked over to the family and stumbled out a few broken Ngakarimojong phrases, hoping I was saying what I meant. They nodded and murmured quiet thanks.

We all watched silently as the nurse inserted the IV into the child's arm. It was then that I noticed that his mother was cradling his head in one hand, with another on his forehead. She stood protectively over him, gazing down at his face, smoothing the sweat off of his brow. Once the IV was in place, the nurse stepped back and the father took the child's hand with the IV in it in his own. I stepped up into their little circle and asked if they would like to pray. They all nodded and said yes. I called over one of the translators and began to pray.

Once I finished, I thanked them and told them I would keep praying. So I ask you who read this to also call out to God for this child. His name is Lomongin. Meninghitis is a serious disease, and we had a bad epidemic a few years ago that killed many. A stiff neck is a dangerous sign, and usually people who get that far don't make it.

Please, pray for this child.


(Note: I wrote this a while ago. He has since been discharged from the hospital, thanks be to God. Continued prayers will be appreciated, however.)
 

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