Take a walk with me through the clinic grounds and Amakom today and, besides the children coming and going to school and the very few sellers on the side of the dirt road, we won’t be able to see many people around – they are all busy farming, since the rainy season has started and the moon is just right, we were told. They leave home before sunrise and many times only come back home after dark.
Come with me to the clinic and you will see many patients with ‘body pains’, elderly hard working grandparents struggling not to give in to osteoarth
ritis, various types of skin infections, hypertension, diabetes and many, many children with malaria.
But I wish you could see, and maybe even carry, one of our little patients that suffer the most this time of the year: the children that cannot afford a whole season (between March up to August, sometimes September) of hunger, the time following the dry season, when the crops are not yet ready to be eaten.
Evans is one of these precious children that make you want to hold him in your arms and not let go. He is being raised by his grandmother, a strong woman determined not to give up. She came to the clinic a month ago (3 months after his mother had abandoned the child), bringing this skinny boy that didn’t have the energy to smile. The clinic staff embraced him, we poured out love on him with the right foods, some medicines and a few old toys that Lucas gave him himself. Today, a month later since that day, what I really would like you to see is his smile, and his little arms stretched up in the air asking for some more love. His smile is pure and genuine, a great reminder to me that it doesn’t take much to make a big difference in someone’s life.
But I would not let you go without having some fried plantain and beans with us, while Luiza and Lucas would compete for your attention and overwhelm you with their requests to read books to them. The best of all? Cold water. I am sure you would appreciate some cold water, since it is so hot here these days. Yes! We do have a generator that has been helping our fridge to do its work well and our brains to stay cool. We were blessed by donations from Brazil that made it possible for us to have a 30kva generator installed last week! And since then I had been able to use our nebulizer on an asthmatic patient in severe crisis on a day that we were scheduled not to have power. The struggles with electricity are still so recent in my mind that I cannot help but walk in the clouds, with my heart filled with thanksgiving to a God that is so faithful and good! Empowered to help? Not only by the generator, but by people who care, just like you. In more ways than we can describe… Thank you!
Comments