Just one of those weeks

 

This was one of those weeks. My computer is broken making work difficult. The letter “T” has completely come off, the letter “N” doesn’t work and the space bar gives me two spaces each time. Ian came to my rescue, as always, and loaned me a keyboard to use, which was great, until the space bar stopped working completely. Is it possible that I am THAT hard on a keyboard?

 

Ian had his own challenges this week, including the guard at the baby home closing the electric gate by accident as he drove through, smashing the door beyond repair. `That gate is only closed after the kids are all in bed and this was the middle of the day. He was not happy.

 

 

After 16 days of the bridge to town being impassable due to heavy rains, Arlyn and Sibusiso were able to get the JCB to the river (3 miles) and then spent FOUR hours clearing large trees, bush and debris that had been stuck on the bridge then making it passable. We are so thankful to our friends who came many years ago and said, “You guys need a back hoe!” and then they shipped us a brand new JCB back hoe from the U.S. 

 

 

That piece of equipment has been a life-saver!! We expect heavy rains and flooding again this weekend, but at least we all got to town and were able to grocery shop again.

 

Our farm team had their own challenges. The ground is SO saturated with water from the rains that it made bailing a huge challenge with the tractors, trailers and even the backhoe getting stuck in the fields. YES we are grateful for the rains and are always thankful for water, but sheesh, we have a LOT of water!

 

While it’s been a challenging week, we also have had a great week!  We are harvesting tilapia again and the kids will have fish and chips for lunch on Sunday! We harvested 19 crates of dragon fruit. Ian and I got to see the new library at the primary school, which is ready for school to commence!! 

 

We have a container shipping from the U.S. this month and ALL 200 pairs of rain boots and ponchos have been purchased from our amazon shopping list as well as some ping pong tables, swimming pools and foosball tables!  Ian has ordered me a new laptop, with a fully functioning keyboard and we our volunteers have been able to purchase goodies to also come in the container to help with a few comforts from home since our borders are still closed to travel.

 

All in all, it has been one of those weeks, with highs that are high and lows that are lows. But we give thanks for the encouragement that James gives us during our times of trouble when he says, “My brothers and sisters, you will face all kinds of trouble. When you do, think of it as pure joy. Your faith will be tested. You know that when this happens it will produce in you the strength to continue. And you must allow this strength to finish its work. Then you will be all you should be. You will have everything you need.”  James 1:2-4

 

Lastly, I want to leave you with something that was a “fun find” for us during our trip to town. While it is impossible to buy fresh fish or seafood here, there is a frozen seafood store that we stopped by to pick up some salmon. While there we saw something that we had never seen before. Mozambican lobster! WHAT??  They had never had it there before, but they had 3 of them in stock so we bought one to enjoy tomorrow on Valentine’s day.  

 

Lock down/lock in can be hard, but we are trying our best to find fun and joy in our daily lives. I hope that you can do that too.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

 

Live from Eswatini ... staying inside the ark today.

 

Janine

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke

I had an “ah ha” moment this week while I was preparing to speak to 300 students at Changhua Senior High School in Taiwan.

I was talking about the topic of hope.  Then I talked about hopelessness.  Then I talked about evil.  And as I prepared for my presentation a link between the three became very clear to me.

I used three examples of hopelessness; Baby Shirley, Baby River and Little Phephile.

Baby Shirley’s mother was hopeless, so much so that she felt the only option she had was to dump her newborn baby in a pit latrine and then dump fire on top of her and left her to die.

Shirley "before".

Shirley "after".

Baby River’s mother was so hopeless that after she gave birth to him she put him in a plastic bag and then dumped him in the river, and left him to be eaten by river crabs.

River "before".

River "after".

Little Phephile’s mother was so hopeless that she was powerless to stop a year of abuse by family members that resulted in Phephile’s arm to be broken in five places and her leg broken in two places.

Phephile "before".

Phephile "after".

I find that people who hear these stories are quick to judge these mothers and call them “evil”.  They are also quick to sentence them for their crimes and demand the harshest of punishment.  But I don’t see it that way. I have looked directly in to the eyes of Shirley’s mother and Phephile’s mother and what I saw was hopelessness.  They were empty, dead inside, with no options, and no hope.

I showed my Taiwanese students before and after photos of these three children. The before photos represented hopelessness, and the after photos represented hope.  And then showed them a quote by Edmund Burke that I find very powerful.  It says: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Could it be that hopelessness turns in to evil when good men and women do nothing?

Could it be that River, Shirley and Phephile would not have had to suffer if their mothers could have found people who cared and acted to help them before their hopeless turned to an act of evil?

Oh how I wish we could have helped these young women when they were in need rather than having to try to put the pieces back together after their babies were injured.

After my speech was finished a young man came up to me and was visibly moved. He said that he has always wanted to stand up against injustice and make a difference in the world, but he has always been told that he wasn’t good enough and would never make a difference. I told him that he had been told lies, that he was powerful beyond measure.  Later in the day he sent me a message that read, “Today, after listening to your speech, l felt something turned to be different in my heart.”

Working and living in Africa has taught me that hope is life-saving, and life-giving.  And hopelessness is life-taking and life-threatening. 

On my darkest days when I am discouraged or wanting to give up it is inevitable that I get an message from someone from around the world writing to encourage me and remind me to keep my eyes on our only true hope … Jesus. Those words are always timely and are exactly what I needed to hear.

I pray that each of us will reach out to others with words of true HOPE when we feel prompted to do so.  You may just save a life.

Live from Taiwan … I am hopeful.

Janine

Baby River is home (after 7 surgery’s and 3 colostomies)!! The whole story.

Thank you Zodwa for spending a month in the hospital with River!

On March 3, 2015 a woman gave birth to a baby boy, put him in a plastic bag and dumped him on the side of a river.  We don’t know how long the newborn was there, but it was long enough for river crabs to eat through the bag and through his tender skin to make a huge hole in his bottom.  The wound looked as if rats had burrowed a hole in his tiny body.

Eventually a passerby heard the cries of the child and called the police. The police took the baby to the hospital were a surgeon quickly attended to the wound and did a “double barrel” colostomy (surgery #1) to help the wound heal without infection.

A week or so later we were called to come and pick up the child, now known as “Baby River”.  He came to the El Roi Baby home and under the care of our amazing medical and caregiver team his wound was healed in a few short weeks. He was returned to the hospital to have his colostomy reversed (surgery #2). 

That surgery seemed to go as planned, but then something went terribly wrong. I will do my best to explain to the best of my knowledge and ability (and lack of medical education) what happened in the days and weeks after that.

·      The reversal did not heal and there was a leak in to his abdomen.

·      Emergency surgery was done (surgery #3), his belly opened up and abdomen cleaned.  At that time they attempted to complete the colostomy reversal again.

·      More infection came and another emergency surgery (surgery #4) was done to find the leak, clean the abdomen and put in a new colostomy (colostomy #2) to reduce infection and help with the healing.

·      Immediately following that surgery we decided to move the baby by ambulance to a private hospital in Manzini.

·      Baby’s overall health continued to fail and within a couple of days his oxygen levels dropped to 40%, the infection had spread to his bloodstream (sepsis) and early one morning he crashed.

·      The Doctors sprung in to action, did CPR and intubated him (put him on a ventilator to breath for him) as his lungs had fluid around them and he couldn’t breathe.

·      Abdominal stitches were removed to allow his intestines and stomach to come out so that the pressure was taken off his lungs (not counted as a surgery) and fluid from lungs was removed with a syringe.

·      The next day surgery #5 took place and the surgeon found two perforations in his bowel, which is why stool was leaking into his abdomen for five days.

·      During that surgery the perforations were fixed and a new ostomony (#3 on the other side of his abdomen) was created. His intestines, stomach and liver were left on the outside his body and they remained there for 2-3 days (sorry, I just couldn’t post that photo)

·      Surgery #6 the surgeon put the organs back in to his abdomen, but didn’t close him up.

·      Surgery #7 the surgeon put all of his organs back in and closed him up.

·      Once he was able to breathe ventilator removed as he was breathing on his own and he was moved to the ward.

·      TWO SHORT WEEKS later … he came home. That was today.

All the nurses wanted to get a photo with the little miracle baby.

Thank you Dr. Kunene, Dr. Okello and Brooke Sleeper for ALL you have done.

In summary,  River is now 3.5 months old. He has been dumped by his mother, eaten by crabs, has had 7 surgeries, 3 colostomies and is a miracle for the whole world to see.

What’s next?

He gets lots of TLC for the next few months.  At that point the #3 ostomy will be reversed (surgery #8).  A few months after that, the #2 colostomy will also be reversed (surgery #9).

Thank you all for your prayers, your love, your emails and your financial support.  We will have the final “bill” on Monday, but we know that we owe many, many thousands of US dollars to the hospital and staff who saved this little ones life.  We are incredibly thankful that there is such a hospital in Swaziland and people who work hand in hand with to do what some days seems impossible.  We ALL saw the hand of God on this baby’s life, over and over again.  There is no question that El Rofi saved this child and we look forward to watching him grow.

Today, I am asking if you can help us pay his hospital bill.  If you can give, please do. 

In the US click here.  

In Canada click here.

Live from Swaziland … so much to be thankful for.

Janine

Baby “River” in emergency surgery, twice this week.

Some of you have heard about Baby River from my blog http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2015/03/river-baby-suicidal-mom-tuberculosis-of.html.  River was born on March 2^nd, and was immediately put in a plastic bag and left on the side of the river to die.  Fortunately he was found, but not before his backside was badly eaten by river crabs.

After having a double-colostomy he came to live at the El Roi Baby Home and healed in record time!  Several weeks later he went back to the hospital to have his colostomy reversed, and the surgery happened without a glitch last week. A few days later, things took a turn for the worst.  There was a breakdown at the surgical site and River had a belly filled with infection.   The surgeon called to tell us that he needed to open up the baby again and try to close up the intestines.

Here is a challenge for us.  We are the legal guardians of the baby, and so we wanted to move the child to a private hospital in Manzini (complete with ICU and Pediatrician), but the baby came to us through a different hospital, and the surgeon responsible for that child wanted to do his very best to help make the child well again.  I totally get that, but what if we could do “better” than that by moving him? 

We had a team (Brooke, Ken and Shongwe) in the car driving to the hospital to transfer the baby to the private hospital for the corrective surgery, but what if the baby died in the car under our care (against the advice of the attending surgeon/hospital)?    We were in a tricky spot.

Thankfully, everyone involved truly does have the best interest of the child at heart. Brooke spoke directly with the Superintendent of the hospital attending to River and he assured us that River was getting good care and asked that we leave him there for the “clean up” surgery.  Our team turned the around, crossed our fingers and prayed for the surgical team.

Three days later (yesterday) I got a call from the surgeon saying that the baby was not well at all.  He needed to do a third abdominal surgery because puss was oozing out of the baby’s belly - the surgical site had broken down, again.  He would clean up the wound, but also give the baby a new colostomy so that the internal wounds would have a better chance at healing.

I “just happen” to have the best surgeon in Swaziland on “speed dial” and I had him “on call” this whole week in case we could transfer the baby.  I called him right away and while he agreed that the child should be moved to the private hospital and agreed that a new colostomy must be done right away, but in order to save the baby’s life the third surgery needed to be done before transferring the baby to the private hospital.  I wanted to pull my hair out.

There was nothing we could do, but pray, and ask El Rofi (the God who heals), to be with the surgeon and guide his hands.  Three hours later, I was called by the surgeon to say that the surgery went well, and he agreed to release the baby to us to be taken to the private hospital.

At first I planned on making the two-hour drive (each way) with Brooke, but the thought of having a 2-hour post-Operation baby in the back seat freaked me out. What if … ?  Getting an ambulance and nurse is not an easy feat in Swaziland, but we had people at two hospitals (and me) working on it.  Within an hour we literally had THREE ambulance options (ranging from $350US to free) and the child was on his way to the private hospital 75 minutes after surgery.  The hospital staff in BOTH hospitals worked together beautifully and I was thrilled to see his little face when I arrived in Manzini.

River is in ICU now and we should hear from a Doctor today on his care plan, but for now, they are keeping him hydrated and treating for infection and we have an Auntie with him 24/7. 

We are thankful for all who are praying for this little guy. We are thankful for all the nurses, doctors and Social workers in both hospitals who helped keep River alive.  He is very strong and even 3-hours out of surgery was holding my finger tightly and talking up a storm.  The cost to have him in the private hospital is close to $500 US per day.  He has a large incision across his belly and has a new colostomy that will need to be reversed (again) in the future. If you can help us with his hospital costs we would be very thankful.

To donate in the US please click here.

To donate in Canada please click here.

Live from Swaziland … it has been an eventful week.

Janine