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| Travelogue #13 October 2009 |
Dateline: Riverside Farm, Zambia; October 28, 2009 – Last travelogue I mentioned just two of the patients we saw in Kafue. A few others might bear mentioning lest they suffer alone in the prisons of their infirmities, never being thought of beyond the limits of their families and a few neighbors. It is hard to suffer alone. But here I will mention but one of them.
Emily sat solitary on a cement porch. It was a nice house, apparently owned by someone with a good job, a government job. But Emily was alone. Both hands lay curled on her lap and a palpable sadness etched itself into her face. I was with three student medical missionaries and we were making our rounds to see people they had found who needed help. She was such a young woman.
One year ago Emily had a stroke, or that’s what she was told. I have not seen bilateral semi-paralysis before in a stroke victim, but both of her arms are capable of but limited gross movement and their strength has all but flown. She spoke in a barely audible whisper and her eyes never really met ours. They were searching for something behind us, perhaps a different time, another circumstance, the end of this relentless nightmare.
She sits with panic in her eyes,
Or might it be despair?
Confined within her brokenness,
‘Neath a weight she cannot bear.
Her hands lie curled upon her lap
Like leaves of summers past,
An ever-present glimpse into
A future she can’t grasp.
No hopeful dreams of youth intrude
Into her bleak domain;
She wakes, then sleeps, and wakes again,
To the same, the same, the same.
But deep within that prisoned mind
Lies a will that would be free;
No earthly foe can fetter it,
For what it wills, can be.
What might have been we’ll never know,
What might? Ah, that we choose;
To strive each day to win, we have,
But hopelessness to lose.
Her younger brother was busying himself about the garage and yard, never far away, always attentive to his sister’s needs. He could move her out of the sun but not out of her sorrow. She was able to attend physical therapy twice a week in the city but the other five days she sat there, unable to care for herself. What she needed was a new perspective. One of the greatest enemies to people in Emily’s position is helplessness and hopelessness. If she could be motivated to take control of her situation rather than surrendering to it, she would awaken each day to possibilities rather than impossibilities. To array a person’s mind against his sickness is the supreme art of genuine medicine. Inspire in an individual courage and purpose, and the mind-power can work miracles. Can she be brought back to full functioning? I have seen it before, and she is still young.
The first challenge was to motivate her to continue her physical therapy at home. I asked her brother if there might be an old inner tube around and sure enough, he produced a torn and brittle automobile tire tube. With a razor blade he cut a thin strip about two feet long. Emily’s hands were not strong enough to grasp the rubber, so we tied it loosely around each wrist. She then mustered all of her strength and slowly stretched the rubber band across her legs and down her thighs. One, two, three times and on and on. She seemed to be gaining confidence with each effort. An ever so slight smile lit her eyes as she saw that there was something she could do, there was a fight she could still wage.
Her brother came over and we brainstormed on all the things he could rig for his sister to work with. You could see he was motivated to do whatever he could to help her. We had a prayer and left, promising to check back with her. I sent back a Theratube I had bought in the USA for her to use. Of course we counseled her on some lifestyle changes she would need to make to avoid the inevitable appointment with a second stroke.
African children in the rural areas, for the most part, are free of most modern trappings. Television is an impossibility, as are computers, video games and the other modern trappings of the west. Frankly I envy them. No Pokemon, no bloody combat, no endless mesmerizing hours before the flashing TV screen. And as for toys, they are almost nonexistent.
Their balls are plastic bags rolled tight,
The boys craft trucks of wire,
Their toys are what they make of life,
Of which they never tire.
Termite mounds supply the clay
To craft their childish thoughts;
An unripe fig will work just right
For Jacks made up of rocks.
Yes, these are innocent children, unspoiled by Mattel, glitz and glitter. I was a bit surprised when one of the children asked me one day, “You have ba-loon?” Not being something I normally carry in my medical missionary bag, I had to confess I did not. I have brought different things in the past for the children, which is hard to do for you never know what will be treasured and what will be trash. Once I brought a stack of Frisbees. That I knew would be a big hit, or thought it anyway. You will notice a Frisbee looks a lot like a plate upside down. I would show them how to throw it, even getting them to toss it a few times, but never saw them playing with it later. I did however see a number of Frisbees filled with shima at dinnertime. But now they wanted a balloon.
Wednesday, when I went back to the American embassy in Lusaka to retrieve my passport with the new visa pages (without which I never would have been allowed back into South Africa), I bought a bag of 100 balloons. There are a lot of children here and for the week, every time I would pass I would hear, “Ba-loon?” Now I had them. I am sure a few parents will be glad to see me leave.
You see, the children like to blow them up and then stretch the open end causing a long screeching sound which delights the children to no end. Maybe the parents have a part to play in a strange phenomenon; the balloons apparently only last a short time for soon the children are on my porch, knocking and calling “Don Miller, ba-loon.” I passed out about 70 of the balloons here and took the rest to Shingoma.
Shingoma is the area across the escarpment, back a couple hundred years ago. No utilities, no fences, no glass in the windows. It is an area that still calculates wealth in cattle or goats, and men still burn their bricks to make their dwellings. Shingoma is where my friend Nelson lives. I was introduced to Nelson and his clan about seven years ago when his nephew, Freddy, was attacked by a crocodile. We treated him successfully and a real friendship grew.
The head of the clan, Nelson’s father, was a polygamist, something very common in Africa. If you can afford them, you can have as many wives as you want. He had three. Some of his grown children had died and Nelson was raising at least two of his nephews. Freddy is one of them. I had taken a picture of a good part of the family seven years ago and has a print made in Lusaka last week and bought a frame for it. What simple pleasure you can give people here. They gathered around the picture, trying to recall all the names. Children grow up and there are few pictures to keep in mind what each person once looked like.
The old man died a year ago of complications from asthma. Nelson also has asthma as well as a few of his children. He has two sets of twins, and a granddaughter only a year older than the youngest. But what a wonderful family. But more of that in the next travelogue.
God bless
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Posted by WorldMighty on 2009-11-01 17:13:29 | Rating: | Views: 3
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