In The Image Of God

Earlier this week, the wounded howls of an 8 year old boy tore through the nursery. 'I won't stay here! I'm going! I'm going with my Mum and Dad! I'm leaving now!'

There were too many foreigners here, he told me and he didn't want them staring at him and he didn't want anything we had to offer. Our children would be mean to him, our food would give him cholera, and our teachers would surely beat him, so no, he didn't want anything from us! He just wanted his Mum!

Although Sebastien's mother loves him she cannot cope with the demands of caring for her son. Sebastien was born with severe club feet and only began receiving corrective treatment last year. He has external fixators - pins driven through the bones of his feet and lower legs that are attached to metal rods and frames.

It was hard, caring for Sebastien under normal circumstances. Then, the house she was living in become unlivable after last year's earthquake. She has been living in a tent with her three children ever since. Sebastien is wheel-chair bound, his care and therapy needs will extend over months and years, and the family's living circumstances are unlikely to change any time soon. While his legs are in frames, and until he is able to walk, Sebastien will not be able to go to school, since Haitian schools are not accessible for children with disabilities. This is not the life his mother wants for him. She wants him to get the care and therapy he needs and she wants him to have a future beyond that.

Although we understand why his mother has given him up, Sebastien does not. In the days following his arrival here, Sebastien grieved hard. He was distrustful and suspicious, he was sad and angry, and he wouldn't eat or play. He had suffered a lifetime of teasing and shunning and rejection, and now, he would face that reality without his Mum. It couldn't get any worse than this, by his estimation.

Even in his sorrow though, Sebastien could see that there was something different about this place. Although it was not a hospital, there were lots of sick kids here. He counted one with cerebral palsy, and several on daily medications. There was a foreign nurse who was missing a leg, and a nanny who was a dwarf. She had had external fixators when she was a little girl, she told him. We must have seemed like a motley bunch of foreigners and Haitians, caring for children who weren't our own, even chronically ill and disabled ones.

More than once, we saw Sebastien watching us with a bemused and perplexed frown. One day, late in the afternoon at bath time, there was a smile dancing in his eyes, and he decided to share some of his observations with me. 'You bathe the children in warm water here! All through bath time, he laughed from deep in his belly and shook his head. His mood had lightened, just for a little while, but as I changed Sebastien into pyjamas, he grew quieter and more serious again. I was pleased that he had softened his heart and allowed a little bit of joy in but the grieving was far from over, and I knew that his moods would be changeable.

'Take me downstairs, Susan, to watch some television'
'I can do that, but you need to eat first, I told him.
'I'm going to eat again?, he asked incredulously? How many times do you feed the children, here?' I replied that we give them three meals and two snacks every day. His all ready serious expression deepened. 'These kids eat a lot,' he told me. 'They are the only ones.'

As Sebastien accepts a new routine, helping me to hand out supplies, doing rounds of the nurseries with me, and some learning activities, I am preparing him for a transfer to the toddler house. He is adjusting better than I would have expected at this point. Most of the time, he is happy and very engaging.

I pray that in the enclosed orphanage environment, he will find love and acceptance. He needs physical healing but more than that, he needs to know deep in his heart that he is beautiful just as he is, a child made in the image of God. Broken and beautiful.







So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him......' (Genesis 1:26)

Perfection

Our newest boy in the nursery, 7 month old Mackenson has a cheeky [ornery] grin, that inevitably draws smiles both from his nannies and from our visitors.

Mackenson was transferred to us from another orphanage on the understanding that his right ear was  malformed and that this would make him difficult to place. We admitted him on Monday, exchanging puzzled glances as we searched for the malformation we had been told about. We found that the cartilage of his left and right ears formed a different shape. Foreign staff questioned Haitian staff. Did Haitians have any traditional beliefs about the shape of the ears?


Absolutely not we were told. Nannies, nurses and the Paediatrician were all in agreement. This did not constitute a malformation. One lady inviting us to examine her own ears, pointed out that her ear cartilage took on exactly the same shape as the new baby's did. others told us of friends and family whose ears were just the same as Macekenson's right ear. He was like many Haitians, they said.

And the fact that one ear looked different from the other. Was that important?

No! Haitian and foreign staff were in agreement. The difference was barely noticeable. Interesting but not really noteworthy.

A quick review of the documentation that came with the baby showed that he had initially been sickly at his previous orphanage. Not so now. He appears to be healthy and developmentally, he is on track for his age.

We are all made in the image of God, but not exactly like him. We are all different. All known personally to him. All needing his enduring love, his grace and his healing.

Soon Mackenson will be proposed to one of our waiting families who will, without reservation, accept him as their son. They will watch with keen eyes, taking notes of all the ways that he is special and all the ways that he is perfection.

Friday Afternoon

'There is a beautiful baby girl waiting outside for you, Miss Susan, fat and pink! She is 6 days old!' Since they told me that she was 'for me' I knew that the baby had been placed in our care pending adoption, and that she would stay at the main house until her adoption was finalized. I could not contain the smile that spread upwards and reached my eyes.'You see Vivianne, Miss Magaly said, playfully nudging Vivianne, Miss Susan is happy, very happy!'

'Send her up to me,' I said. I was still smiling, and yes, I was very pleased by the news. I have admitted dozens of babies to out main house nursery. There is always a sense of anticipation.

Ten minutes later, there were a pangs of grief, where joy should have danced. The baby was pretty, yes, but she was not pink, she was pale. So very pale. She was working extremely hard to breathe. I noted her small, upwards slanting eyes, short neck, and a deep crease, cutting straight across the palm of her hand. Sonya had many of the physical features of Down syndrome. Her toe mails were clubbed, a sign of chronic oxygen deprivation. Even on oxygen, Sonya was blue and her oxygen levels dipped frequently. The baby gazed up at me listlessly. She was floppy. A blood test showed that she was retaining carbon dioxide in her lungs and that the acid levels in her blood were rising. She was critically ill.

Anywhere in the developed world, a baby as sick as Sonya would placed on a ventilator. I had a sinking feeling...... Even if we could find a hospital that would ventilate her, Sonya would never survive the journey down the mountain. Then it occurred to me; we could put Sonya on CPAP. Baby Sophie, who had arrived three days earlier still needed to be on the system. Could we run two? I had the equipment to do that. I would have to make some modifications to the second system to make it operate with the equipment that I had. I didn't know if the circuit would support two CPAP systems. I would have to make it work. Sonya was exhausted. I had no idea whether CPAP would help her, but it was her only chance of survival.

The NICU was highly charged with the activity involved in getting a second CPAP circuit up and running. By the grace of God, a NICU nurse from Canada had arrived the week before, and she was on hand to help with the intense work of getting Sonya onto CPAP, stabilizing and monitoring her. Four hours later, Sonya was on CPAP, IV fluids and IV drugs, She was breathing easily, sleeping peacefully and her blood gasses were almost within normal ranges. I was extremely tired, but elated! I would need this victory to get me through the weekend. One CPAP baby is a lot of work, and now we have two, and both are on IV's and need tube feeds and constant attention and observation. Right now, GLA's NICU is being pushed to the very limit of its capabilities. I will admit to being overwhelmed at times this weekend, and I will share more details about that soon. I am also in awe tonight, though, at what our medical capabilities are, and at what we have been able to do for these babies.