Firstly, greetings to our friends in England and many thanks for the welcome and kind wishes we received during our short visit for our son’s wedding. We are sorry we could not have met more of you this time.
We arrived back safely in Kisoro on Tuesday evening.
Wednesday dawned warm and sunny, and having rung Jenny, the CMS Mission Partner here, to see how things were going she informed us she had three frail babies at her home. We offered our support and went to see her. What a contrast from the cold grey days in England. Brightly coloured birds were singing, the grass was lush and green and trees were in full leaf. People smiled and said hello as we walked past and the volcanic mountains loomed magnificently in the distance.
We first met little Joshua, a tiny one month old baby who’s mentally ill mother had refused to feed him, and who’s grandmother, who was supposed to be caring for him, had been found sleeping drunk in the streets, leaving Joshua totally alone all night. Thankfully someone had heard of Jenny’s work at the Potters Village home for vulnerable babies and now Joshua is fed regularly and well looked after. What a contrast to Britain where social workers and doctors would have been involved with his mother’s state of health and the grandmother’s ability to take care of the child would have been carefully checked.
Then we met Esther, so small at 1.4 kg that she made Joshua look gigantic! She had been born prematurely to a young mother who, for no obvious reason, died after the birth in the hospital. She had been ill all throughout her pregnancy and she left a young bewildered husband with a baby no one expected to live. Again the baby was taken to Jenny and despite her size is feeding well and looking around alertly. By contrast, in Britain, her mother would have had free medical care throughout her pregnancy, scans and check-ups to monitor hers and the baby’s health, and a team of experienced people around at the birth.
The final baby we met was Emmanuel. He was born with AIDs and had contracted pneumonia; the hospital felt they could do nothing for him and was understaffed so Jenny brought him to her home to give him love, care and attention. His breathing was laboured, his chest rattling and medical staff at the hospital had been unable to fit a cannula to enable antibiotics to be taken easily because his veins had started shutting down. A care worker from Potters Village stayed with him constantly and he had survived the night and seemed a little better when we met him. However, at lunch time his breathing changed alarmingly. Despite every effort to resuscitate him, he died in Irene’s arms. He was buried the same afternoon in the graveyard containing his mother.
What would have been his chances of survival if he had happened to have been born and treated in Britain, we will never know. But we do know that by contrast, the medical staff would have had the most up to date pieces of equipment and the drugs required to give him the best chance of survival.
Contrast your lives with those who are struggling in countries less developed, with fewer opportunities for advancement and poorer health care. Please remember to give thanks to God for your position and use it to do whatever He asks to support those who do not have such advantages.
For more details of the work of ‘Potters Village’ go to: http://www.pottersvillage.org.uk/
Prayer requests:
Please thank God:
- for our safe return to Kisoro
- for Potter’s Village and its work which is saving the lives of many babies
Please pray:
- that we will quickly settle back into the work here
- for the work at Potter’s Village, that it will continue help babies to develop healthily
- that the Ugandan national elections later this month will proceed peacefully
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