An African Story

Woke up at 4:30 yesterday morning in order to hit the road by 5:30.  Marie (a French doctor), Marshal and I swung around to pick up six local NGO workers, which meant there were seven of us crammed into the back of her truck.  The NGO has a program for malnourished children in rural sites all around Berberati, their home base.  Off we went, through ravines and rivers, over boulders and washboard roads, straddling gutters several feet deep and going over "bridges" made of loose logs and planks with no vertical supports - three stops and thirty miles later (around 10:00am), we made it.

At the last stop, Marshal and I joined Marie (the other NGO workers were left at the other stops to be picked up on return) in measuring children and implementing treatment.  We measured the childrens' weight, height, and arm circumference, and plotted their weight on a graph if they were deemed to be malnourished.  Malnourished children are given Plumpy Peanut, a mixture of fat, protein, and essential vitamins and minerals, twice daily for a week.  Follow-up is done during weekly visits, and the graphs are used to evaluate changes from week to weeks and monitor for improvement.  One infant we saw was severely anemic, so we decided to bring her, her mother, and her grandmother back to Gamboula for treatment.

On the return trip I reflected on how a short drive was changing, once again, my perception of Africa.  Aside from a new appreciation for smooth roads, there was much to reflect on.  Beside me lay an infant struggling for each breath, held by a mother who had probably never ridden in a vehicle before.  With thirty miles and four hours to Gamboula, I wondered, would the child make it?

I also wondered at the beauty of the country, despite the poverty of the people.  Passing "villages", which were really clusters of small buildings made of wood and thatch and perhaps some clay bricks, again and again I saw children playing and received their smiles and waves.  Between villages was unbroken savannah for as far as the eye could see, and occasionally people walking or taking moto-taxis.  The trip became an analogy for my perception of Africa, in many ways.  Africa is a beautiful and welcoming place, but like our journey it seems to be bouncing its way along to a destination it may never reach in time.

As the hours stretched and we inched our way home, the child quieted and the rain began. Rivers filled the gulleys we straddled, red with mud, and the truck slid and bounced precariously along its still more uncertain course.  It wasn't until we were on the final leg of our journey, however, that an unsettled feeling began to overtake me.  As I looked at the child, now seated across from me, it seemed as if she wasn't sleepy, but stuporous - unresponsive to the tossing of the truck and limp in her mother's arms.  A pulse check from the local NGOs reassured me somewhat, and so I remained quiet about my fears.  After all, we would be in Gamboula in an hour and there was little that could be done now.  As the rain turned into a downpour, though, I could no longer remain quiet.  "Is the infant ok?"  I asked in French.  And for the next two or three minutes, the NGOs searched for a pulse.  No radial.  No brachial.  No carotid.  No femoral.  And as the truck tipped over into a deep gulley, it was only my desire that kept me from accepting she had died before my eyes, in her mother's arms, an hour away from a transfusion that could have saved her life that morning . . . As the men got out to set to work trying to free the truck, I asked Marie (who was in the front) to come back and check the child.  And as she listened for a heart beat and her face fell, my heart plummeted.  She was gone.

I stepped out of the truck into the rain, and let the sky share my grief.  As the Fulani women cried in the truck, and the men hacked out a new route through the bush, I asked God "Why?".

We made our way back through the mud and gulleys to Gamboula, stopping in town to gather a team for burial.  The dead child was held by her grandmother for this whole stretch, wrapped in a blue and white blanket.  We buried the child in a Fulani cemetary, in an unmarked grave.  And I never asked for or learned her name.  For me, that child represents the reality, cold and hard, of Africa.  She didn't have to die.  She didn't deserve to die.  But she, and thousands of other children are dying everyday.  Twenty-five percent of children under five years of age die in Africa.  A few dollars would have saved her life, yesterday.  Reason hammers at me, leaving me feeling senseless and still only able to ask "Why".  I don't have any answers.  But I do feel responsible.