Anne, the intern and I went over to the little girl and I immediately picked her up. She was very tiny. Her grandmother came around the corner and introduced the little girl to us. Her name was Naomi. The mother to Naomi was gone looking for work and the father was lying in their house; the grandmother said he was sick.
We went into the house to visit the father and he was lying on the dirt floor, covered with some dirty old blankets, not able to move or speak. The grandmother to Naomi said that the father had cerebral malaria.
Cerebral malaria is the most serious case of malaria as it affects the brain and is normally fatal within a few days of infection. Therefore if treatment is not taken immediately for it, which in this case with the father, probably not, death is usually the outcome. (check out: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/cerebral-malaria-symptoms-and-treatment.html)
However, the father also looked like he had AIDS; his symptoms similar to that at the end stages of the disease. I suggested to our intern that we pray for him. The word comfort had come to my mind so we prayed that he would be comforted and comfortable.
Afterwards, we brought Naomi back to the TI compound to give her a bath, some clothes and some food. She sucked back the milk as if she hadn't drank anything in weeks. She wanted one banana after another and a few slices of bread. She was hungry.
We brought her back to her home with a bag of maize (corn) and some milk and lots of fruit.
Last year, the grandmother showed up at our gate saying the father had died and the mother had run off, marrying another man and abandoning her children. This left the grandmother, somewhere around 70 years old, to now raise her little grandchildren. We did the assessment on the family and put them into our sponsorship program. In January of this year, the first to be sponsored in the family of children was Naomi, by some friends of Sean and mine from Canada.
Today, Anne and I went to deliver the food, the fourth month of being under the sponsorship program, to the family. It was the first time I had seen the family since they were sponsored, receiving food. They were so excited. The children, including Naomi looked happy. The grandmother was rejoicing, praising God, for now she could feed the children in her home.
It's not much, what we give right now, with having only one child in a house of six, sponsored but it's enough to give them a meal a day at least.
This is what makes it worth it all, to see the worry and fear be swept away from a grandmother's face; to see the joy of the children's face knowing that they won't be going to bed hungry again. It makes my heart so incredibly happy.
Thanking God,
Meredith
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