Haiti Mission Possible: Day 10

Monday, July 5, 2010 – Today we wrapped up our technical work on site and took the opportunity to lend a helping hand around the ministry and take in the community, but unfortunately the day started out with some bad news, two of the kids in the rescue center had died (which is actually not abnormal considering some of the severe sickness they suffer from); these were the first to die while we were on site. Though I had not directly interacted with the two children who’d passed, I still felt a sense of sadness come over me; these kids did not die because they were born with a disease or a deformity, they died because they had been severely malnourished for so long, and the rescue center just didn’t have enough time to reverse the health damages that had been already done. There was also a stomach virus going around that made most of the children sick and there was an outbreak of chicken pox that spread to 7 of the 60 kids at the center.

In that moment of hearing this information, I thought about my niece Natalia, my acquired nephews TJ and Lennox and all the children who are a part of and will enter my life in the future. These children are happy, healthy kids who can go on about the business of being children without the worry of not having their basic needs provided for. I can’t even imagine them not having food to eat or being severely malnourished. A large number of the center’s kids suffer from a form a malnutrition call Kwashiorkor (Kwash).  When a child has Kwash, they are lacking protein in their diet which first stunts their growth and then eventually causes swelling on certain parts of their body. When I first arrived, I noticed some of these children because they are so small and appear to be in so much pain; a lot of them have to have feeding tubes and/ or placed on oxygen to survive. But the most shocking thing is that these children, who appear to be infants because they are so small, are actually toddlers and young children ages 3 to 5 who can actually speak and understand conversation.

If one even spends a minute in the rescue center, you can clearly see the need for a bigger building/ facility where they can adequately care for these sick children. The ministry does the best they can with what they have, but it doesn’t mean they should accept that as the best and final solution for the needs of these children. Once again, I am amazed at the work they do with the facilities that they have. They are meeting the needs of Cazale and the surrounding communities in ways that can only be fulfilled by the grace if God.