It was hot. Like
every other day. The kids from the primary school down the dirt road were
having a quasi-track meet on the soccer field so there were kids literally
everywhere you looked. The boys had lost the keys to their room so to talk to
them I had to stand outside at the window. I was trying to make plans with Jon
for going to Matata to use the ATM and Noxie, a fifteen year old girl who hangs
out at the center, kept trying to get my attention. Somewhat annoyed I told her
I’d be there in just a second. Jon and I had decided to leave in ten minutes so
I needed to go change clothes and grab by backpack. I figured I’d see what
Noxie needed on my way to do this. She grabbed my arm as I turned the corner of
the house and said, “This boy. He is crying. He says he has a head ache.” He
couldn’t be more than seven years old. Swazis are infamous for over
exaggerating illnesses (probably due to the fact that often what seems to them
like an ordinary cold can be deadly because of the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS)
and I figured this was one of those cases, no big deal. I had some children’s
ibuprofen in the room, so I grabbed it and pulled him inside into the shade.
The second my skin made contact with his though, I knew something was seriously
wrong. I’ve never felt another human being that hot before. He had that
unmistakable look of a sick child. His eyes were watery and he couldn’t speak
much louder than a whisper. I gave him the ibuprofen and then some cold water
to cool him down, but after the first couple sips he vomited up everything I
had just given him. I was taking him to the clinic.
The clinic is
less than a hundred yards from the center where we live. The nurse there is
named Wisdom and he’s from Zimbabwe. Since it’s not a government subsidized
public clinic it’s much more expensive than the other clinics in the area. But
it’s considerably closer, so many people pay the higher prices to avoid paying
for the transportation elsewhere. When I say expensive though, I mean
comparatively. It’s R100 for an adult and R50 for a child. That’s about $13.50
and $6.75, respectively. But when you only earn a couple hundred rand a month,
that’s quite expensive. It’s not an option for many of the people who live
around here. We’ve paid for a fair few people to go to the clinic since we’ve
been here, and that’s what I was doing with this child.
His name, it turns
out, is Lungelo. He is actually nine, and he’s in the second grade. When Wisdom
took his temperature we were both alarmed to find out that it was 40.7 degrees
Celsius, or 105 Fahrenheit. He kept insisting that he was fine though, and that
he wasn’t sick because he was afraid he’d have to get a shot. He was right. He
couldn’t eat, and he couldn’t take and oral medication on an empty stomach, so
an injection was the only solution. I held his shaking body as Wisdom tried to
give it to him. But he kept moving and the needle kept clogging, so in the end
he got stuck four times and most of the fluid ended up on my skirt rather than
in him. I took him back to the center and left him sleeping on a mattress. I
told Kate that he needed to go back at 2:00 to have his temperature checked,
and left with German for Matata.
When I got home
and asked Kate what had happened with him so told me that he randomly got up
and walked home without telling anyone where he was going. He didn’t want to go
back to the clinic for fear of another shot. His house is pretty far away so I
just had to hope that he would be better.
A week or so
later I was woken up rather earlier than I wanted to be because Lungelo and his
mom were outside. He had not in fact gotten better. His fever persisted and he
had no appetite. He suffered head aches and sweats. He has malaria. The place
where he lives is by the river, and three of his family members have been
diagnosed with malaria in the last two weeks. Our good friend Majabane lives
right by him and had malaria last week. This time I paid for them to go to the
other clinic nearby because they have more of the resources needed to treat
him. That kind of smile on a worried mother’s face is impossible to forget. Her
baby was going to be okay.
Mapile, one of
our translators and best friends, and I have gone to visit Lungelo and his
family twice since then. It’s about thirty minutes from our house to his and I
enjoy the walk with Mapile as much as I enjoy the destination. The first time
we went we found Lungelo and his younger brother Mphinda making toy cars with
two of their friends Marvin (strange, I know) and Pupu (pronounced,
unfortunately, exactly like it looks). His mom was out collecting firewood and
his dad was “drinking”, as he told us. While we waited for his mom Mapile
educated me in the art of making toy cars. We see kids all the time with these
things, but I never knew they actually made them themselves. The frame is made
out of thick wire, the tires out of the bottoms of aluminum cans stuck together,
thin wire and electrical tape hold everything together, and a piece of sugar
cane is used to steer it. They collect all of the materials from trash pits and
it can take quite a while to get everything they need. Lungelo was doing much
better. He was running around and laughing like a normal 9 year old again.
Except he had a massive cut above his eye and his whole eyebrow was swollen.
Apparently another kid had whacked him in the face with a wheelbarrow. Despite
this somewhat alarming injury though, he was fine. We waited for a few hours
with no sign of his mother returning, so we left but told Lungelo to tell her
we’d been there and would come back another time.
Last Wednesday
we went again. Once again we found Mphinda and Lungelo all alone at the homestead.
Their mother had gotten a job and they didn’t know where their father was. I
asked about the toy cars and he said he’d given them to a friend. Weeks of
searching for materials and days of work, wasted in an act of generosity. Jesus
would have liked it. We stayed for an hour or so, playing with them and the
neighbor girls, and then Mapile insisted that they come with us to the care
point so that they could eat before dinner when their mom came home. As we
walked over there Lungelo and Mphinda chased each other back and forth,
wrestling when they caught the other one. Such little boys. Lungelo’s eyebrow
was completely healed, and he had no other medical issues to boast of. We left
them at the care point to eat, two happy, healthy boys.
But as we walked
away it struck me how sad it was that though they had a lot to be thankful for
simply in their good health, they were still barefoot and clothed in pants and
shirts with gaping holes in them. Their house couldn’t be anywhere near warm at
night. Their father and mother never seemed to be at home. And yet they are
some of the lucky ones because they have two parents still alive living with
them on the homestead and they aren’t sick.
The standards are a tad skewed.
