i could give this blog a number of titles.
Why the children?
I want to beat drunk people with sticks.
Running into the pain feels like diving into a pool full of rocks.
So you have gathered that i have had a rough week. as a disclaimer, i had many a rough week while working in calgary also. i cared for many patients whose situations broke my heart. i counseled dysfunctional families on christmas day while they denied alcohol abuse. i cried myself to sleep on more than one occasion after the death of a patient.
i just didn't post my thoughts and experiences to a blog. partly because i probably would have been sued by the health region, but also because i had a patient roommate who listened to my venting and b*&%ching. but now i have you. the people who read this blog. i come home to an empty house and talking to the wall or the racing grannies on my mantle is not doing the trick.
so, if you want to hear about my days, continue reading and accompany on my journey. what i am sharing is simply what i am dealing with and trying to cope with. so if you continue reading, consider yourself my new global roommate.
the past couple of weeks have been trying. i have been witness, by sight and sound, to atrocities i could not imagine could happen. i have been part of some counseling sessions at the local girls
highschool. i have listened to stories from teenage girls about the trauma they have experienced. one saw a
kikuyu man burned alive just down the road while people shouted "we will have
nyama choma (roasted meat) today!!". another slept in a swamp for two nights because chaos was ensuing all around her. yet another was forced to walk in the streets of
kisumu shouting down
kibaki in front of a strange funeral procession involving a snake and people dressed in wigs.
i have visited several
IDP (internally displaced people) camps within a 50km radius of where i live. tens of thousands of people living in squalor because of their last name. or because they rented a home from someone with the wrong last name/tribe. i have sat with an elderly man under a tree while he explained that he was literally chased off his land and all his maize burned to charcoal. i have had 50 children hanging off my body (literally a child hanging off each finger) until i organized games on a lawn to distract them. i took
hanna, an 11 year old, and her mother to emergency after she broke her arm while collecting firewood. i navigated the health system for her hard-of-hearing mother and then assisted the people in the cast clinic to set
hanna's arm. with very little medicine for pain, i wrenched her arm one way, while the technician pulled it the other way, and all the while listening to
hanna scream for mercy.
then there are my sundays. several sunday afternoons were taken up with arguing with people using and abusing a family of orphans. an uncle and his wife tried to stop them from going to a boarding school, because then their "income generating project" would be gone. they admit to using the children to get food and other items from "well wishers." they asked how they would feed their own children or get free things without the orphans around? then there was the headmistress at their former school. she had neglected them while they were there and then refused to release any of their belongings. we had to make several shopping trips to get new mattresses, clothes and school supplies.
things at the hospital get no better. i mercifully missed the birth of a stillborn baby, but inquired about the other baby in the nursery. a teenage mother gave birth at home and brought the baby that morning because it wasn't doing well. my short visit into the nursery turned into 5 hours of trying to resuscitate this premature newborn, only for her to die while i held her head in my hands. again, i wrapped the baby and offered her to the mother to hold, which she refused. instead, i sat beside her on the bench, the lifeless child in one arm, my other on the mothers back, and this time i could not hold back the tears. i quietly wept and asked esther to tell the young girl that she had done the best she could and we had done the best we could.
today, sunday, was another unenjoyable day. i went with one of our volunteers and several people from catholic relief services to the home of 5 orphaned children who have no support. we finally met the grandmother and two uncles, all of whom were drunk out of their minds. we spent several hours trying to figure out who was to care for these children (i mostly listen and try to quietly advocate through an interpreter). at one point the grandmother tried to get in a fist fight with the youngest uncle, of whom i suspect is sexually abusing the children, and then screamed "take these children away! i don't want them!" the anger inside me was trying to push itself out through hot tears. but i would not let them come. it was finally settled that an uncle and aunt would present themselves, sober, to the catholic clinic later this week for further talks. we left the food, soap, and clothes with the seemingly most responsible person, however, the drunk grandmother is known for stealing anything from the children.
but what i love most is this...
as i pick up cheryl and winnie, two of the orphans, in a bear hug, and swing them in the air, their exhilarating laughter tickles the most inner part of my ears and swells my heart beyond the capacity of my chest.
it is the only thing that keeps me going and gives me hope.
yet, even with all the frustration and pain, i have never loved a job more.
as an aside, i saw this quote on someone else's website. i guess i know i am not locking my heart in a coffin and that the laughter of innocent children is a piece of heaven on earth.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
