I don’t recommend visiting the Rabat Children’s Hospital when you’re having PMS because you will be transformed into the type of woman you never wanted to be–the weepy kind. (Gosh I am rocking this middle age thing! Zits, wrinkles, and overt emotions! Woo-hoo! Bring it on!)
Since no one had the consideration to tell me this ahead of time, I visited the Hospital yesterday with my friend, who has volunteered there for about 12 years. It was the day they were passing out the Christmas boxes, and she wanted to be there. You might think, isn’t Christmas over yet?, and you would be right of course, but these are boxes that are packed up by children in privileged countries at Christmas, labeled “boy” or “girl,” and shipped overseas. There is a fair amount of administrative detail, planning and shipping and coordinating, that goes into these things.
My friend told me about the first year they passed out Christmas boxes. They took a collection in to a group of children who were having dialysis. The children spent the entire first day just hugging their boxes. No one opened theirs. They just held them. After all, the joy of anticipation is a huge part of receiving a present. It wasn’t until the next day that they opened their boxes, shared out their presents with their brothers and sisters. In subsequent years, the volunteers helped them start. “Someone has to go first and everyone else will wait for that,” my friend explained. I agreed, although we both know it’s not like that in American families.
I loved seeing the amazed smiles on the faces of the children yesterday as they clutched their boxes to their chests. I am not sentimental about third-world children; I have driven through too many villages where the children ran up to beg for my pen and cursed me when I didn‘t give it to them, or threw rocks at our car as we passed by. But the kids yesterday were the stuff of which appeals by children‘s charities are made; shy sweet smiles of gratitude, pure joy as they clutched their boxes to their chests.
The boxes themselves were pretty awesome too. Many were hand-decorated with pictures of Christmas trees and snowmen and candy canes, and most had some version of “Mery Cristmas” on them, written lopsidedly in colored marker.
The Children’s Hospital is not a depressing place. It is bright and freshly-painted in rainbow colours and there’s even a play room on this floor, put in last year, with big windows and a good variety of toys. My friend told me of the many, many changes since she first started coming. She gets frustrated that various volunteer groups have spent money on paint instead of on medicines for desperately-ill children whose families can’t afford their care. I understood her point–who wouldn’t?–but I also pointed out that the feel of the hospital is important. It feels like a place with hope.
At the same time, that hope can be hard to sustain. We saw a tiny apple-cheeked baby, cocooned in the thick polyester blankets ubiquitous in North Africa, just a bright-eyed little face in a wad of material. She was sporting that thing when they’ve got to keep a vein open so they stick a needle in you, plug it off, and tape it in place. I know there is a single, simple word for these in the English language, but I can’t tell you what it is. Hers was in her hand. Next to her, a toddler howled disconsolately; he had a vein-open thing (whatever that word is) in his head, wrapped in purple cloth; his mother and aunt were fussing over him. Ilsa gave him a Christmas box but he didn’t even look at it, just kept wailing while his mother pulled a much-washed-but-clean t-shirt over his head. These tiny ones are already on dialysis. I don’t know the details of their conditions, but I do know that their futures aren’t bright.
At this hospital, a female relative (usually the mother) stays with the child; they sleep in the same bed. On the one hand, that obviously isn‘t ideal in all circumstances, but I can see the appeal of this too–how nice for a sad scared child to snuggle with his mother, enjoying her undivided attention.
We met baby Adam, who was bright-eyed and curious but very thin, in with a kidney infection that just wouldn’t clear up. He sat on his mother’s lap and reached for a blue teddy bear. We met a woman my friend has known through the years, in with her daughter. They have no money to pay so the girl has gone a couple of weeks without her medicine. She lay there on her bed, curled up on one side, absolutely still, her eyes inwardly-focused and unaware of us. In the other bed, a girl of about 10 was getting her dialysis; she also didn’t move but her eyes stared back at us, curious. Next to her on her bed was a Christmas box, opened and spilling forth its brightly-colored contents.
We didn’t stay all that long, but it was hard to leave. People kept coming up to us. My friend has cut back on her hours there and so many people wanted to talk to her, wanted to give her updates on their children, wanted to show her the lists of expensive medicines they can’t afford.
We walked down four flights of stairs, each one with a different colour stripe (which is brilliant for a clientele that is often illiterate), and out into the warm spring air. “If I break my arm, will I come here?” Ilsa asked me. “No,” I told her. “You would go to a private clinic.” My friend’s daughter chimed in. “Your parents have money,” she told her. “You wouldn’t come here.” And that is the case. In a land where a visit to a specialist costs about $25, we can afford good care if we need it.
The woman whose daughter lay so still? She only needed about $12 to bring back life and movement, at least for a while.
18 comments
February 25, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Kelly @ Love Well
That sound is my heart breaking.
February 25, 2009 at 7:10 pm
All Rileyed Up
Oh. Wow. What a different world it is somewhere else. reading things like this really remind me to step back and be grateful for what I have.
Is the word you’re trying to think of IV (or IV needle)?
February 25, 2009 at 7:30 pm
suz
Thanks for sharing~that would be a hard place for me to visit,I would be so emotional..thanks again for sharing with those of us who do not get to experience things like this~
February 25, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Tonggu Momma
That sounds absolutely soul shattering.
February 25, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Kris
Is the word you’re trying to think of “stint” ?
I’m not certain that’s what you’re thinking of from your description, but I think it might be.
February 25, 2009 at 11:25 pm
ShackelMom
IV catheter? Butterfly?
Oh, I know. That’s how it is in our country too. It takes so little to do a lot, but the the need is everywhere. It is a joy to help when comparatively, we have so much, but you feel like the boy with his finger in the dike. I’m really glad for those boxes, the kids need more than medicine.
February 25, 2009 at 11:46 pm
planetnomad
Catheter. I think that was it. Stint works too. Thanks.
ShackelMom, the irony is that this place is centuries ahead of what they had in Mauritania, where the children’s graveyard is on the hospital grounds.
February 25, 2009 at 11:51 pm
LIB
I think the word you’re trying to come up with is “shunt” .
Kudos for not burying your head in the sand–for getting out there. And how cool that Ilsa went with you! She wont be a ‘typical complacent American teenager’.
February 26, 2009 at 7:52 am
Heather
Well, now you have me weepy.
February 26, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Jeanne A
Good to hear about the receiving end of those boxes we send each year.
Any comments about what we should be putting in there.
I spent so much time trying to figure out appropriate things but always wonder if it’s money well spent.
Guess we’ll keep on sending those boxes!
February 26, 2009 at 11:03 pm
gretchen from lifenut
My heart goes out to those kiddos…
Thanks for sharing your experience regarding the shoebox gifts, too. Our church processes 80,000 of those shoe boxes every year as a collection point for Denver.
February 27, 2009 at 2:41 pm
suburbancorrespondent
Being mid-forties myself, I’m crying. Thanks.
It’s called a “hep-lock,” at least around here. I had one when I was in the hospital after giving birth to my first baby.
I can’t thank you enough for mentioning those Christmas boxes. We did those this past year, 4 of them. It ended up costing me about 100 dollars and I couldn’t help thinking, “What a waste of money – I should have just donated some cash to some organization instead.” I’m glad to hear that I’m wrong.
February 27, 2009 at 3:40 pm
jolyn
I think I am glad for once not to have pictures to go along with the story. I don’t know how you managed to leave.
February 27, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Mary Witzl
What a poignant post, and how sad I feel for those children and their parents!
I see someone else has already told you about shunts; I used to work on a pediatric ward and saw many tiny babies with shunts. But it’s just heartbreaking when you know they have little hope of a decent future.
March 5, 2009 at 8:19 pm
expat21
Well, I think this is really big progress. When I moved to Morocco, about seventeen years ago, I suggested to my Moroccan husband that I might like to volunteer at a hospital. His reaction was that it was unacceptable, because people would both be angry at me for “taking someone’s job,” AND the mentality was such that he said everyone would think the only reason a person would volunteer would be to get free access to drugs to steal. Sad.
Expat 21
expat21.wordpress.com
April 11, 2009 at 3:20 pm
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July 14, 2009 at 3:54 am
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November 30, 2009 at 11:10 pm
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