Saving Babies

I just returned from four days in the bush with some amazing people.  There is so much to tell about this vision trip, but one event bears telling by itself.  We were visiting a place where pastors are trained and then placed in villages where a well has been dug.  The team brought hundreds of pillow case dresses for the girls and the time had come to distribute them.  We were in the area where the pastors-in-training and their families live.  There are long rows of single rooms (12 x 12) with an area to cook outside and each on the pastors and their families live in that one room.  Saying that it is primitive is an understatement.  As the pillow cases were being sorted someone pointed to a woman and said she was the one that recently had twins.  Several of us made our way over to see the new little ones.  I asked to hold one and the first thing that struck me is that I could feel every rib and bone.  We were then told that the babies were five days old and since the mom’s milk had not come in they hadn’t had anything to eat for five days.  The babies were five days old and had never eaten!  I looked at John Arnold who was the leader of our trip and said that we couldn’t let these babies die.  Can you imagine – for five nights the mother and father of these two little boys had listened to them scream for food, and how the mom must have felt because she couldn’t produce any milk?  The grandmother was the one who was telling us this so we asked where we could buy formula.  She took us to a pharmacy not far from the school and the woman there told us that we should let the babies die because no one in the area had enough money to buy formula to feed the babies.  We told her that we would buy the food and where was the nearest pharmacy where we could find it.  When we walked back to the home of the twins we decided that John would drive to the village with the grandmother and father and that I would stay and pray until they returned.  The mom sat with one baby and I with the other in their little one room living space.  It doesn’t have a door – just a curtain which had been pulled back and I caught sight of two of the women from the team out of the corner of my eye.  I called for them to come and help pray with me.  One of them was a nurse, Vickie, and as we stood there with our minds and emotions reeling, she said that we should try pouring water on a rag to see if the babies were strong enough to suck.  Karen, the other woman with us, went back and brought a clean bandana she had.  We tore it in two pieces and poured water on them and put it the babies’ mouths.  Both started sucking right away.  It was the first liquid they had received and you could tell they were enjoying it.  It took about an hour and forty-five minutes for John to return.  We didn’t want to give them too much water so that they wouldn’t be hungry when the formula arrived, but those little babies were craving liquid.  John returned with a one-month case of formula, two bottles and a prescription for the mom to help stimulate her milk to come in.  One of the team members paid for everything.  Vickie mixed up the formula and explained to the grandma, mom and dad how to prepare it.  When the grandma and mom put the bottles to the babies’ mouths, both started eating right away.  We left for the evening planning to return this morning as we left the compound.  I dreaded to stop and check on them for fear they hadn’t made it through the night but when we walked up we were greeted by the grandma with a huge smile.  For the first night, the babies had slept all night without screaming from hunger!  We prayed for the little family one last time and started our journey back to Ouagadougou.

It is so totally impossible to comprehend a situation where someone has to watch as their babies starve to death because they don’t have the money to buy formula.  As a mother I can’t imagine the emotions of watching that process.  For these two little boys, we were there at the right time and had the resources to spare their lives.  The timing wasn’t by “accident” or coincidence.  As remote as the school is and with the few visitors they receive, only God could’ve come up with the plan. 

This is a hard country and starvation happens frequently.  But today, two little boys won’t starve to death and the joy of that is indescribable.