Three babies and three stories you will never forget

Baby Lewis arrived

This week we received our 250^th baby. How did that happen? 250 children have been placed with us by the Social Welfare department of the Kingdom of Eswatini and we are here to love them back to life and then raise them to be the future of this nation. 

At times it is overwhelming, but being overwhelmed doesn’t help save lives, so we just have to put our heads down and get to work.

Baby Lewis (#250) arrived on Thursday and I was so busy I didn’t get a chance to post his arrival, and then yesterday we got a call about another child in desperate need, so today I will share their stories with you as we celebrate their lives.  I hope you will never forget these children.

Baby Lewis is 2-months-old and came to us from a very sad situation, with both mother and father being mentally disabled.  My friend Eileen (Lewis) Habelow went with me up the mountain to the homestead with the Social Welfare officer and found the baby (who had been left alone at home for hours) lying in a pool of his own urine and feces, hungry and screaming.  We quickly got him out of his soaked clothing, gave him a nice warm bottle and soon he was cooing in my arms. 

We got home and gave thanks for this little guy and then suddenly realized that he was baby #250!  We needed to celebrate!  I called Lisa in our US office and asked her to pull together a graphic that celebrated our 250^th child arriving.  But before I could get the image posted, another child arrived.

Baby Asande arrived yesterday. Burned and hurting.  His mother abandoned him with a woman who is completely blind. She became blind after her husband beat her badly because she couldn’t give him a child, causing a serious injury to her head causing the blindness.  That same man is the father to Asande (from another woman), and he told his wife he would kill her if she didn’t’ care for the baby.  Earlier this week she accidently spilled boiling water on the boy, burning his torso and arm very badly.   Social welfare had been involved with this case for many months, but this time intervened and removed the child to save his life and placed him with us. He will turn 2-years-old this month, and arrived just under our 2-year-old cut off AND gets his very first birthday cake.  Another tragic situation that will turn to triumph. 

On Monday we received a little girl whom we are calling Tilly. She is 11-months-old and is absolutely terrified of adults. For days she has been inconsolable and we assumed it was a combination of coming down from alcohol addiction (her mother is an alcoholic and was nursing her), and severe physical abuse (her mother tried to strangle and kill her last weekend).  But we have since learned that this baby was being raised by children, and adults only hurt her when they were around. We discovered this when one of our Aunties took her out to see the toddlers, trying to get her to stop crying one day.  She immediately calmed down and looked around for a face that she knew. She saw our 2-year-old Mollie and tried to get on Mollie’s back to be carried. What a heartbreaking sight for everyone to see.  Slowly she is starting to trust the “big people” around her, and yesterday Ian was even able to hold her for a moment before she screamed, but it was progress indeed.  We do think that it was women who abused her most.

Some days are harder than others, but when I think I am having a bad day, all I have to do is think about any of these three children and I see how blessed I am and that God has called me to be a part of their lives. 

If you have read this far, I am asking you to consider making a one-time gift in celebration of our 250^th (and 251^st) child.  Would you give $25?  $250 $2,500 or maybe even $25,000 to help us be able to save the next child who is burned, broken or abandoned?  We are willing to do the heavy lifting here, but can’t do it without an ever-growing family of supporters around the world.  Also, please share this blog with friends and family and on your social media platforms. Help us get the word out that there are children in Eswatini who desperately need help. 

In the US please click here.

 

In Canada please click here.

Thank you for praying for us and with us.  It takes a village to raise a child, and a really large village to raise 251+. 

Live from Eswatini … I am going to see my three new little ones.

Janine

5-day-old baby girl burned in house fire

This is a traditional stick & mud house. The dried grass roof is highly flammable.

Recently I received a call from a social welfare officer who was in tears.  She had just met an 8-year-old girl who was burned in a house fire when she was only 5-days-old, and has not received treatment since then. She called me to warn me that she was sending me some very graphic photos of the young girl. She asked me to look at the photos and then call her back so we could see if there was any way to get the child help.  (I will not post the photos in this blog).

Next, I heard the “bing, bing, bing” of photos coming in to WhatsApp on my phone, and with trepidation, I opened them. I have received MANY horrific photos from police, hospitals, social welfare officers and even our own staff, but nothing prepared me for these photos. 

The girl was allegedly burned in what is commonly known here as “Lubane”.

“According to the Traditional Healers Association in Swaziland, Lubane is when fire erupts out of nowhere and is associated with the use of black magic.  The intention of Lubane is to hurt the person experiencing it and often leading to death if untreated. A person goes and raises a dead person with fire and uses them as an invincible arsonist who, after touching anything, will leave it on fire.” (source: Swazi Observer June 2018).

Those of us who don’t believe in such things might suggest that the grass roof was struck by lightening and spontaneously combusted in to flames, collapsing on the people inside, often leaving no time to get out of the collapsed roof/house.

Photo of a stick and mud house after a fire. Photo credit: Chris Cheek

I opened my WhatsApp and saw something out of a horror film. A girl whose head had been so badly burned that one eye was completely heat-sealed by skin, but I could see the eyeball underneath the skin shielding the eye.  One of her ears had burned off, her nose was gone and her top lip had also burned away, leaving her teeth and mouth exposed and unable to close.  Half of her scalp had also burned, leaving a swath of exposed skin pulled tightly over the top of her skull.

I was sick to my stomach, and called the social worker back to get more details of the story. She told me that the father is in prison (which is where she first heard about the case), the mother works in town and sends food to the homestead when she can.  The young girl stays with a very old Gogo (Grandmother) in a very rural part of the country. She was in 2^nd grade in school, but the teasing and taunting of the children became too much and so now she stays at home and sits outside all day.

Ian and I are met with challenges on a daily basis that we just can’t do anything about.  There are so many people in need, so much disease, so many hungry children, so much pain and suffering, and we simply can’t help everyone. But seeing a child in such pain is not something that I can live with, if there is a way to get her help. 

We have friends in the US who have helped us with a burned child in the past, and so I quickly typed and email, said and prayer and hit “send”.  Over the next few days I emailed back and forth with our friends, and true to their nature, they want to help this little girl if they can.

Many details still have to be worked out, but one of the major challenges is finding a home in the Boston or Philadelphia area for the child and a guardian/social worker to live for several months at a time.  Her surgeries will take several years to be complete, and she will come back to a safe place in eSwatini between procedures.

Please pray with us for wisdom, clarity and favor for us as we navigate a path of healing and wholeness for this child of God. 

Thank Jesus for hearing this girl's cries and the prayers of the old Gogo. Thank you for hearing all of our cries and for sending the Comforter in our darkest hours.

Live from Swaziland … Lord hear our prayers.

Janine

We want to see the burned baby.

We talk a lot about stigmatization in eSwatini.  I am not sure if I had ever used the word before working here, but it’s a word that is used almost daily.

There is stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS, OVC’s (orphans and vulnerable children), and people with disabilities.

A few days ago we had Pastors from our 30 church partners come for the day and there were two women who asked one of our staff to see “the burned baby”.  What?  Yes, they wanted us to call over our child who had been burned by her mother so that they could see her face.  They had read about her in the paper and then saw her a couple of years ago when they were here, so wanted to see her again.  As you might imagine, “mama bear” rose up and stopped the Auntie who had been asked from going and fetching our little girl. But then I took the opportunity to talk to them about stigmatizing a child because of the way they look.  They understood and apologized.

Another category of stigmatization is for people with albinism.  Albinism is quite common here (much more so than in the US or Canada) and I invited the founder of the Albinism Foundation of Swaziland to come and educate our staff on what it is all about and to help dispel the myths that circulate here about the condition.

Some of the myths that our staff learned growing up include:

·      People with albinism don’t die they just disappear.

·      People with albinism can see in the dark.

·      If you laugh at a person with albinism then you will “catch” albinism.

·      People with albinism have to cut the tags off the back of their shirts so the tags don’t cut their skin.

·      Albinism is contagious. 
·      People with albinism are not human, they are animals.

It was a fascinating conversation and Stukie (the founder) as she dispelled the myths and answered our questions with such grace providing us with excellent information.

She also explained that children with albinism are at high risk in Swaziland because they are considered “very lucky” and are often stolen from families, killed and used by some witch doctors as an “ingredient” to make muti (potion) for a person to drink to become powerful. Yes, children with albinism are sacrificed for a potion. It’s big business and people have paid as much as $200,000 USD for an albino child.   That is partially the reason for the myth that Albino’s don’t die they just disappear.

The conversation was as enlightening as it was disturbing.  
 
I personally know a family who has a baby with albinism who had two cars arrive at their front door and ask to take the "animal".  Fortunately they were able to send the cars away and get their child to safety.

Some days I have to go home and just sit on our patio and look at the beautiful scenery in front of me to forget the things that I have learned. Some days I have to go and watch babies learning to feed themselves to remind me why we are here and what God has called us to do.  Some days I am just numb.

Live from eSwatini … some days I just don’t understand.

Janine

The story of 4 Mothers in Swaziland - what would you do?

  Tomorrow is Mothers Day and want to dedicate this blog to my mom, Bernice Willis, who is living in Ontario, Canada, a million miles away from Swaziland.  Mom, I love you and am eternally grateful that you and dad adopted me as a baby and raised me to be the woman I am today. Without you, your faith in God and your faith in me I would not be here in Swaziland today helping other babies who weren’t lucky enough to get you!  Siyabonga Kakhulu Make.

I have a theory that Mothers do the best they can for their children with what they have. That means what they have in the areas of knowledge, upbringing, education, financial means, love, faith, confidence and a host of other tools. I may be wrong, but being an eternal optimist it is a view that I want to believe.  As I think about Mothers Day tomorrow I have been thinking about four mothers who I have had interaction with this week.  These women are not for you or me to judge, but rather maybe to prompt you to give thanks for the mother that you were given, think about the mother that you are and consider what you might do if you were one of these four mothers in Swaziland.

Mother #1 – a 14-year old girl who gave birth on Friday morning via C-section and who refused to look at the child or touch the child after birth.  The baby lies only 30 feet from the mother in the hospital, but this young girl wants nothing to do with it.  Why?  We don’t know, because she has not revealed who the father is.  Her secrecy in itself tells that the father is likely someone close to her or the family.  Is this young mother (or girl who gave birth to a baby) doing the best she can by turning away from the child so that she can focus on her own education and future?

Baby Isaac, born May 10th, 2013. 2.6KG

 Mother #2 –  a 30-year old mother of four children who has lived at the government hospital for the past 57 days.  Her 18-month old child was lit on fire by his own father (not living with the mother) and then hidden for five days to suffer his 3^rd degree burns in silence.  This mother has watched her child live in excruciating pain and she has slept on a chair for almost two months resting her head on the child’s bed to sleep each night.  She asked us to take the child to the El Roi Baby home when he is healed so that he may be safe from the father’s revenge.  In the interim we have been able to move the baby and mother to a private hospital so that he can get excellent care while he heals and remains safe from further harm.  Is this mother doing the best she can for the baby by giving him to us so that the child will live in safety?

My new BFF - burned baby is moved to private hospital.

Mother #3 – a mother who handed her 5-week old baby to a neighbor so that she could go and use the toilet, then she ran away, never to return.  The child’s health card reveals that the mother was HIV positive and the baby is on Anti-retrovirals, which we will now give her at the El Roi Baby Home, which is her new home. Did the mother do the best she could by leaving the child with a stranger, knowing that she herself was sick and had no means to feed or care for the child?

Mother #4 – a young mother gave birth at a local hospital and then ran away leaving the child.  The baby girl has been living at the hospital for two weeks and there is no sign of the mother coming back.  The hospital has no record of the mother, no way to find her and not even a name for the baby. We are hoping that this baby may also come and live at the El Roi Baby home, but only time will tell.  We can’t begin to imagine what kind of situation this mother was in that would cause her to carry a child for 42 weeks and then run away from her when she is born.

These are only four of many stories that I we heard and dealt with this week. It was a big week for babies and mothers and I am thankful that I am here in Swaziland to be a part of these stories. 

I am thankful that my birth mother (who was 15-years old) made a choice to give me up for adoption so that I could have a better life than she could give me.  Giving a child away is a heartbreaking act, but in many ways it may be the most selfless act mother can do.

Live from Swaziland … Happy Mothers Day to all women who have brought a life in to this world and to all the mothers who have received someone else’s child to care for.  El Roi see you.

Janine

Nomsa did not get good news ... and other updates.

 When someone asks you if you want the good news or the bad news first, which do you want? This blog will update you on several people whom I have written about in the past few months and  I will start with the bad news so that I leave you with good news.

Nomsa:  www.wednesdayswithnomsa.blogspot.com  We finally got her tests result back and she is POSITIVE still for Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis.  To make things worse she also has a new type of lung infection called MOWT.  I am in South Africa for a couple of days so I heard this by phone yesterday when the nurse called with the test results. Nomsa is devastated as she was sure that she would be leaving the hospital next week, but now she starts new treatment and according to the doctor it is another 6-8 months in hospital.  She was inconsolable yesterday, but I will head in to visit her tomorrow and bring love (and KFC J).  I will write a full report with more details of MOWT in this Wednesday blog.

Nomsa at her bed in the hospital.

Burned baby: http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-burned-baby-has-burned-hole-in-my.html  I have no good news to report on the baby who was burned by his father.  I met with the mother again this week and she is anxious to get back to her other three children who are now living alone.  She lost her job because she has been at the hospital for seven weeks, but at the same time doesn't want to be discharged because she can’t pay her $56 hospital bill.  I assured her that we will help her with the payment when the time comes, but we are still navigating the political waters to try to help this child.  I am hopeful that the situation will be resolved this week and that the child will be moved to a private hospital.

Now for the good news updates!

On Monday we will be receiving a new baby girl!  She is three weeks old and was left with strangers when her mother said she needed to go to the toilet. Imagine that?  “Please hold my baby while I use the toilet” and then the mother disappears. The people took the baby to the police and she is now in the hospital. We will pick her up on Monday.

Yesterday Beth Blaisdell, Elaine Baker and Kim Kennedy arrived in Johannesburg from the US and will be joined by the rest of their team from the US Bank on Monday. These women will be working diligently to assemble furniture and decorate the Sisekelo Preschool in one short week.  I will post photos next week, but I somehow think that this just might be the nicest preschool on the continent J.

Parents who wanted to drop off their babies at Project Canaan: http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-would-husband-and-wife-arrive-at.html  The little baby in this story is doing really well.  He is on Anti-Retro Viral medication for his HIV/AIDS and his lung infection is gone.  He is at home with his mother and his father is working at Project Canaan and goes home on the weekends.  He is a hard worker and we are thankful to have him on the construction team, which is building the Toddler home.  A great ending to a story, which started very badly.

Baby Deborah: http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2013/02/its-tuesday-night-newborn-dumped-baby.html  She is TOO CUTE!  I wish I had a current photo to upload here, but I am in South Africa writing this and don’t have a picture.  She is doing so well and although she is still sleeping in my fathers doll crib she will be moving to a “big girl” bed soon!

Jabu and her twin boys: http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2013/03/do-for-one-person-what-you-wish-you.html  Jabu loves working El Roi and the family has settled in well at Project Canaan.  The boys are very active, fun loving and full of life now that they are eating properly (and regularly) and being stimulated with other children at the Farm Managers Building. We are thankful for Jabu’s care for all the babies at El Roi.

14-year old pregnant girl:  http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2013/03/no-baby-sometimes-things-are-not-as.html  She is still pregnant.  Her due date came and went so we know that the doctor (and ultrasound) were correct, it was not the rape that caused her pregnancy.  There had to have been another “incident”.  We expect her baby by the end of May and will still accept him/her at El Roi.  Then we will see how we can help this young girl share with a Social Worker what really happened.

Live from South Africa … I am going shopping with the girls.

Janine

The burned baby has burned a hole in my soul.

child's face hidden to protect him.

I have horrific photos of this child's burns, but it would not be right to post them publicly.
___________________________________________________________________________

Since I first heard about the baby who was lit on fire by his own father I have not been able to rest. My heart hurts and my head is confused. How could this happen? What kind of a man lights his 18-month old baby on fire?  It’s the same kind of man who beats his 15-month old baby (same child) so badly around the head and buttocks that the child has to be hospitalized.  But no charges were laid on this man and the boy was taken back home after his wounds healed.

Two months later this same man was angry at his son for “soiling” himself.  The same reason he beat him in January. Yes, this 18-month old isn’t quite toilet trained yet and soiled himself, so to punish him the father lit his bum on fire to teach him a lesson.

Each day I think about this, have conversations about it or pray about it I get more and more angry.

I got home late Tuesday night from my US visit and went straight to deal with this situation on Wednesday morning.  We are being asked by the mother and Social Welfare office to bring the baby to the El Roi Baby home when he is well enough to be discharged from the hospital because the father is determined to kill the child when he is released from prison.  This boy we call Benjamin will hopefully find his permanent home on Project Canaan, if that will keep him safe from harm.

As I was reviewing the whole situation Shirley gave me the original newspaper article about the child, which just fueled my anger even more (see article below).  This man intentionally lit his son on fire (for pooping his pants), the child has THIRD degree burns, no second-degree burns, AND then he HID the child for FIVE DAYS so no one would see what he had done.  Further more, when the children was found and taken to the hospital he demanded that the child go to the government hospital instead of the semi-private hospital because the nurses would recognize him from the January child-beating incident.

All I want to do is go and visit the father in prison with a diaper, some lighter fluid and a pack of matches.  But I am told I can’t visit. Why?  Because if the child comes to live with us it will be to protect him from this monster and I should not identify myself to him so that the child remains safe.  (Maybe Quinton Tarantino is available to go “medieval” on him?)

When I left the US I had a suitcase full of top-of-the line burn supplies and treatment, but we can’t get them to the child until we have Guardianship.  We can’t mandate or direct how a hospital gives care, and it is a dangerous road (and potentially dangerous to the patient) to start interfering with hospital treatment or care.  We don’t want to step on toes, but need to gently navigate through the system to help the child.  We have funding to move the child to a private hospital where he will get his bandages changed every 12 hours, rather than every 48+ hours, and a team of people working on a plan for skin grafting and surgery.  But it all takes time, wisdom and patience, which is not one of my best virtues.

We are praying without ceasing this weekend that the politics and process surrounding this case will be cleared on Monday and we will be allowed to help the child, and the mother (who has left 3 other children uncared for while staying at the hospital for the past month).  We hope that we can help this whole family in some way, starting with food (Manna Packs from Feed My Starving Children), clothing and TOMS Shoes as their clothes are rags and they have no shoes.  It won’t solve all of their problems, but it will help for today and tomorrow, while we try to help in the long term with the little one.

I am frustrated, but I know that God’s timing is always perfect and when we couldn’t remove the boy yesterday I knew there was a reason.  So today I sit and blog to keep me focused and remind myself that this is all HIS plan, not my plan and I am only invited to be a small part of it.  I ask you to pray with me that a clear path is made and that confusion put aside.

On a happy note we received and unloaded a container filled with supplies for the Sisekelo preschool and the EL ROI Baby Home today, sent by our friends at the US Bank and shipped by the UPS Foundation.   This is great news for all of the children living at EL ROI and little Benjamin who will one day attend school there.

Live from Swaziland … I am thankful that this is where I live and serve.

Janine

Bombing in Boston, Flooding in Chicago, Burned Baby in Swaziland.

 Do you ever sit back and think, “The world has gone crazy”?

This week two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring 176 people.  With live television and high-speed internet the world was able to watch each moment of the blast as well as the search and capture of the two suspected bombers.  We all want to protect our children and family from harm, but it is not always possible.  It is easy to live in a constant state of fear, but fear is not from God and it can cripple us in our every day life, if we allow it to.

After a great week in Florida and Georgia (with Spencer and Chloe) and the opportunity to speak to many people and raise funds for Heart for Africa I got on a plane to Chicago. When I arrived it was snowing and many streets were closed because of flash floods and rivers overflowing.  The McDonalds in this photo was just down the street from my hotel was an “Island” surrounded by water.  Many people lost their homes in these unexpected floods and now have to pick up the pieces of their lives.  We can’t control natural disasters, but they are a part of life and we must help one another when times like these are in front of us.

Meanwhile back in Swaziland the little baby boy who was burned by his father continues to lie in a hospital fighting for his life.  He has 2^nd and 3^rd degree burns on 20%-25% of his little body and also arrived at the hospital severely malnourished and Anemic.   I am told that he needs to consume 5,000 calories per day in order to get “nutritionally stable” and give his body a chance of living and not dying.  That is pretty hard to do when you are only sipping a cup of water and gnawing on a chicken bone.  We are working on a plan and I will give a full report after I return to Swaziland and am able to share news with you.

These three “news items” don't include so many other critical issues and events that took place both globally and locally, but they are three that caught my attention this week.

I am in awe of the people who are the “first responders” in terrorist attacks, natural disasters and deliberate acts of child abuse.

We saw Firemen, Medical personnel and ordinary everyday people rush to the aid of the bombing victims who lost lives, limbs and blood.  We watched emergency response teams rush in to rescue flood victims while their homes were destroyed.  And I had the honor of watching ordinary everyday people in the US and Canada be deliberate in coming to the assistance of the little boy in Swaziland who was not on the 24-hour news, he was not in the mainstream media, but still needed rescuing from a deliberate act of child abuse.

Last week’s blog prompted an outpouring of prayer, love and financial support from the people who sacrificially gave $10, to other people who gave what they could at that moment, and still others who have committed to do all they can to have this child live a full and un-scared life.  We live in a broken world, full of sin, fear and evil.  But this week I was reminded over and over again that Jesus is securely on the throne, and while I can’t begin to understand the “why” of any of these situations, I am so thankful for people who don’t have to have the “why” question answered in order to help. 

This week I encourage you to take a moment to look around and ask who or how can you provide help and hope for someone today.  You can be a part of something GOOD in someone’s life when a lot around us looks like bad. But we have to be deliberate in our actions, just like the First Responders in this weeks news headlines.

I am in the US for two more days and look forward to spending them with Ann and Doug Williams and their friends and family in Munster, Indiana.  I am thankful for all the people who hosted events for the past three weeks to help us raise awareness and funds for Heart for Africa including:  Shelly & Barry Harp (Texas), Pam Joseph (Georgia), Beth Blaisdell (Georgia), Sandra and Andy Stanley (Georgia), Sandra Green (Georgia), Judy and John Bardis (Nevada & Georgia), Joanne Ivy (Illinois) and Kevin and Karen Burkum (Illinois).  Without your hospitality and commitment many people would have missed the opportunity to be a part of something big that God is doing in Swaziland.  Thank you also to all of you who have given so generously. 

Live from Chicago … its snowing here and I will be heading home on Monday.

Janine

PS – a quick update on “Nomsa” from my wednesdayswithnomsa.blogspot.com . Her culture results are still not back so they have sent another one away for testing. We should have results back in 4 more weeks.  Will post as soon as we know.

Father lit his 18-month old baby boy on fire?

Having one foot in “first world” and one foot in “third world” is very disturbing and it is divisive to my soul.

I have been visiting the United States for two weeks and have had two weeks of "extremes".  

I started my travels in “Sin City” Las Vegas where I was invited to be a part of the MedAssets Business Summit with 4,000 other people staying in a hotel that has almost as many rooms (3,309) as we have people in the community surrounding Project Canaan (3,500).  I then got to visit a small town in Texas where the people love Jesus, the Rattlesnakes are waking up and the Tumbleweeds are blowing across the road as you drive past beautiful Cattle Ranches and farms that are feeding America. I can only imagine that one day Project Canaan will be a farm that feeds Swaziland! 

Next, I spent two nights in Georgia with women from the US Bank who have big corporate jobs, but even bigger hearts.  At one well-planned dinner they successfully raised $34,000 to help educate and bring life-changing jobs to women of Swaziland.  While Lori Marschall and Rona Nix were busy in California raising funds for me to have a good, used, 4 x 4 vehicle “baby rescue” vehicle that will navigate the rough roads of Swaziland, the women from WOMENETICS provided me with a brand new Porsche 911 to drive to Florida to see Spencer (!).  It is SO COOL!  

The best part of the whole trip has been getting to visit Spencer!!  He is studying “Business Marketing" at Florida State University (home to 44,000 students, which is half the total population of the Capitol City of Mbabane, Swaziland) and for his extra-curricular activity he is a part of the FSU High Flying Circus.  We get to see him perform several times this weekend  and it makes me wonder if the babies at El Roi will one day have incredible opportunities like that?!  I am thankful to be here and a very proud mama.

Ian and I are so very proud of Spencer and Chloe.

It has been two weeks of extremes, from locations to conversations, but my “snap back into my other reality” came when I received a phone call from Swaziland last week.

There was good news and bad news.   The good news was that Baby #28 had arrived at El Roi and little 10-day old Elisha was happy and healthy.

The bad news rocked my world.  We were contacted by the Social Welfare Department to see if we could make room for and care for an 18-month old baby boy, who had been badly burned by his father.  I asked Shirley and Ian to gather more information and it slowly came to me as the week progressed. Here is some of what we know, and what I feel that I can share with you at this time, while still maintaining some privacy for the family.

“Social problems” as they are called in Swaziland, are always complicated, so I will try to explain this as simply as possible.

-       Woman was married to a man who died a couple of years ago.

-       Woman lives at her dead husbands homestead with his family and has nowhere else to live.

-       Woman gets pregnant by another man (we do not know the circumstances of this pregnancy).

-       Baby is born, but “culture” does not permit a baby from another man to live with the mother in her husbands homestead so baby has to go live with his Grandmother (biological Father’s mother)

-       In January 2013 (baby was 15-months old) the father beat the baby badly around the face.  The issue was settled “culturally” between the families (?) and no police report was made.

-       On March 13^th 2013 the Grandmother was working in the fields and came in and found the baby crying.  She called him to come and saw that he could not walk.

-       Grandmother found severe burns covering his buttocks and genitals.

-       I saw a photo of this baby in the newspaper at the end of March and the burns were horrific.  They showed his backside and it looked as if the baby was wearing a diaper and it had been lit on fire.

-       The father said he had accidently spilled boiling water on the boy, but the family does not believe this and neither do the doctors.

-       The father is now in prison.

-       The baby is at the Government hospital and while I want to show full respect for that hospital in this blog, I will say that I do not believe that they have the resources to give this child the care he needs to survive and recover.  I have been there and this child needs private care.

-       When the child is released from the hospital he will need somewhere safe to live. The mother has asked that we take him because she can’t take him to her “home” and the father will be released from prison. The whole family is very concerned about what the father will do when he is released.

The problem is complicated.  I am 8,500 miles away. Once I get back I will be taken to meet the mother, the Grandmother and I will go to the prison to meet the father, but in the meantime I sit on the other side of the planet and think about the pain that this boy and his mother are going through. The next step is to get this child proper care so that he can have a chance at a “normal” life.

I don't know what the future holds as there are many questions that still need answering. I don’t know if this child is to come to the El Roi baby home or if the mother and child are to come and live in the Sicalo Lesisha Kibbutz, but I do know that EL ROI sees them both and has a plan, and we can help.

I do know that we can do something now, today.  Shirley and Ian have secured a bed at a private hospital in Swaziland who we believe can provide excellent care for this child.  I can’t imagine what this would cost in America, but in Swaziland the cost for the next 60 days is almost $30,000 US, not including surgeries, skin grafts or other things that might be needed.

I know that $30,000 can feed a lot of children or provide care for many babies, but I think about what if the baby was Spencer or Chloe?  What if the baby who has massive burns on 20% of his whole body, and in the most private areas was YOUR child?  If it were my child I would stop at nothing to get him/her proper care.  This mother has no options, she has no one to call, no one to email and no one ask for financial assistance.  She is hopeless.  But I know that she is praying and asking God for help and He is her only hope. She is crying out daily for Him to send an angel and I am hoping that angel is reading this blog.

I will give you all an update after I get back home, but in the meantime I am hoping to raise a minimum of $20,000 so that we can commit to the mother that we will help her and move the baby to a different hospital. Yesterday I posted this need on Facebook and received $1,000 and I am so thankful for those early responders.  We have a long way to go, but I have faith that He will provide.

If you can give today please click here to make a secure donation.  Alternatively you can mail a check to:   Heart for Africa US,  P.O. Box 758 Cape Girardeau, MO 63702
Heart for Africa Canada, P.O. Box 246, Dept HOPE, Pickering, Ontario, L1V 2R4

I live in a world of extremes. I struggle having one foot in “first world” and the other foot in “third world”.  I long to be at home with my husband, my other babies and my Swazi family, but I give thanks for the opportunity to be here in this blessed country and I give thanks for every opportunity that I am being given while here.

Live from Florida … I am going back to the High Flying Circus today (and praying for a baby 8,500 miles away).

Janine