(Pictures: Grace getting practicing her diapering skills; Grace with the Romeo and Tswa’s baby sister, sorry I guess we don’t have any photos of Romeo or Tswa.)
We had some sad news this week, our friend’s sister had her baby very prematurely and the baby died. The mother still has to go through the customary 40 days in the home after birth but without the company of a new baby. Losing children here is definitely less common than in Chad (where it was a very regular occurrence), but there are still reminders that many children don’t have the general health, sanitation and medical care here that we are used to back home.
We heard this week that one of the neighborhood babies is sick. The mother told us yesterday morning as she passed our house. The baby is the youngest child of one of the poorest families in our neighborhood. The three children consist of a boy (Romeo, probably around 9 years old), a girl (Tswa, around 2 1/2 years) who loves to play with Grace and the baby who isn’t old enough to crawl yet (probably 8 months). The family lives in a tin shack near a ledge that drops into the ocean.
Many things about this family break our hearts.
Most often we just see the three kids wandering up our street. The boy carries the baby and plops her down somewhere while his little sister runs around with her big innocent smile and he looks longingly at the other boys his age that roam the streets unencumbered by two younger siblings. Sometimes Romeo sits patiently on our porch with the baby while Grace and Tswa play, but other times you see him playing with the other boys and the baby has been left somewhere nearby. Tom unwittingly got the boy in trouble this past weekend by scooping the baby up. She was in the road across from our house, eating what looked like chalk and we couldn’t see Romeo anywhere. Just then the father (usually nowhere to be found) came along just as the boy returned as well to chew the boy out and hit him on the head. We were angrier with the dad.
Tswa loves to play at our house. She has a knack for getting into trouble. She grabs everything and can be a little destructive, but she always seems to maintain a sweet smile throughout. She is often without shoes, always seems to be a little sick (runny nose or cough) and is usually filthy. Sometimes she is running around by herself even though her house is across the busy main street and on a precarious ledge. When we came back after the New Year we were worried to see her head wrapped in bandages and new scars on her face. She had fallen off the ledge onto the rocks below. We’re not sure what kind of medical care she received but when the bandages came off her head was still misshapen.
The mother works in the market. We’ve seen her there with the baby once (women never bring babies when they work in the market). We’re not sure her story, why she doesn’t have the family network to help care for her kids or why her husband doesn’t help more, but we do know that she has lost three other children to illness. All young kids or babies, which she described as being fine and then one day got sick and died suddenly within a couple days. Part of us doesn’t wonder that Tswa had just a bad accident or that her kids aren’t very healthy. We see how they live, how the younger two stick any piece of garbage in their mouths and how they lack almost any supervision in an unsafe location. Still it breaks our hearts. Please pray for them.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are feeling much better, no more tummy trouble! There has been some rain and so we’ve had a few cooler days amidst the heat. We were able to connect with our old neighbors in their new home. We just had another ultrasound today and we’re greeted with the good news that our baby boy continues to be growing healthy and normally. We look forward to flying as planned on Feb 25 to South Africa to have the baby.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
The public school and university teachers have been on strike for a long time but it is coming to a head now. If they don’t resume school this week then the whole year will be void. There were some rowdy demonstrations this week with the promise of escalation if there is no resolution. Please pray. A friend working on the island has heard that his dad is struggling after heart surgery back in the States, pray for his dad and family. Pray for the two families we just talked about above. Our next two weeks are going to be packed, pray that we can get done all we need to without stress and while still being able to say good good-byes to our neighbors. We’re renewing our year-long visas this week, pray this processes smoothly.
