Our social worker, Anne, came to the staff meeting this morning, telling us of a woman that we needed to meet. This woman’s mother belongs to a friend of ours widow project in a little village called Maili Saba (Mile-ee Sa-ba). Anne was doing assessments on the widows in that area for a food distribution that we’ll be doing next week and this is where Anne met this particular woman.
The woman, the daughter, Milka, showed up to our meeting. She was dressed up for it and I could tell she was nervous about speaking to us.
Anne asked Milka to share the story of her mother, the grandmother to the children. The grandmother’s name is Sabina.
Milka said that her mother, who is seventy years old, is taking care of her grandchildren because her three sons and one daughter died of AIDs. Milka is the only remaining child for Sabina.
Sabina is thankfully living on two points of an acre of her own land and has a house that she and her grandchildren live in. Milka said that her brothers had been very hardworking men when they were alive and that they had built another home on the property as well. The children that Sabina is raising range from age seventeen years old to six months old, totalling about 18 grandchildren. This one seventy year old grandmother is raising her 18 grandchildren because all but one of her children has died of AIDs.
There is a nine year old and the six month old grandchildren that have been confirmed to be HIV+. When their father found out that he was HIV+, he went and got his children tested for it as well. The remaining grandchildren have not been tested but Milka and Sabina feel that about six to eight of the other ones are HIV+ as well.
Milka said that what they needed was 1) to be able to have all the children tested for HIV and 2) to help feed this family. She is a nurse and whenever she can find a contract job, she takes it, just so she can assist her mother and her nieces and nephews. Milka has a family of her own and yet she doesn’t want to see her extended family suffer.
As Milka spoke of her siblings who had passed away; as she spoke about her grandmother and nieces and nephews, tears would well up in her eyes. There came a point when I couldn’t look at her anymore; the tears were welling up in my eyes too. I turned away in time to have them fall down my cheeks.
And when I heard of one of the children being six months old and HIV+, I immediately looked at Sean. Could we take the baby for a little while and get him/her the proper care, nutrition, medicine that he/she needed to survive these fragile next few months? Could we take him/her PLEASE?!?!?!? We have the extra room! We’re ready for this! All these questions, hopes, possibilities kept running through my head. I want so badly, from the moment I heard about this little one, to do it.
My heart ached for Milka. I saw a strong woman, doing what she could for her mother but I also saw defeat and sadness in her eyes.
We’ll be going out there in a few weeks to assess the home and the children to see what can be done. I’ll keep you posted.
In Him,
Meredith
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