This past week has seen us start our work with Aunt Louise’s
School for Children with Disabilities.
This is a “Synergy Away” venture, combining health checks with
sports. The day enabled Tim to play for
2 hours straight – something that always gladdens his youthful heart!
River of Life Church has been visiting this school for a
number of months, doing ministry with them, and also offering physio services
to certain children (which is a massive blessing for them), courtesy of our
dear friend Sarah Beale.
Whilst we’re on the topic of Bealey, we also dedicated Noah
at church a couple of weeks ago, and the lucky little boy is honoured to have a
wonderful Godmother (Bealey) and Godfather (our next door neighbour and
all-round star, Tom Lubega).BYE BYE BRIGITTE & BRUCE
Brigitte, you may remember, is
the Canadian nurse with whom Sarah started the Baby Unit back in January 2013
(after many months of plotting, all laced with generous quantities of
cake!). Although she had not been
working on the unit herself since last August/September, she made a star
appearance in December to help us through a short-term staffing crisis. She will be greatly missed by us all at the
Baby Unit.
And on the Baby Unit....
Just in case anyone is wondering whether God can heal. You bet he can, and he DID! Unlike in the UK, here if mothers want to
take their babies home early, even if it is a verrrry bad idea, we have to let
them. We get them to “sign against
medical advice” and then off they go. So
Maama Sulainah insisted on taking her little premature baby home, promising to
keep feeding the baby with expressed breast milk orally, and to return a few
days later. However, when she did return,
we were all alarmed to see that she looked really quite ill. Indeed over the next day, she continued to
deteriorate, even to the point of episodically stopping breathing. Now that we’ve been in Uganda a while, Sarah
knows what that usually means. The game
is up. There were people already praying
for this little one back in the UK, and Sarah also prayed that God would do
something, because she was certain that the baby wouldn’t survive without a
miracle. We all know that God doesn’t
heal every time, and sometimes it’s mystifying why one person is healed, and another
is not. But Baby Sulainah did indeed
survive and is continuing to heal – she’s even breastfeeding well these days. Woo hoooo!
Maybe God knew that we really needed this encouragement on
the Baby Unit – we’ve had a number of sick babies die lately, and it does get
you down. But what about next time a
mother wants to take her baby home too early?
Tim said: “well maybe you should tell the mothers that their baby will
probably die if they go home, and it will be all their own fault”. Then he paused.... and he said “well, maybe
not if it’s due to lacking money or something”.
And therein lies the problem.
It’s nearly ALWAYS about lacking money, or lacking someone to look after
your other kids at home. Whatever the
reason, it’s rarely that the mother simply doesn’t care. From now, we’re planning to be stubborn when
mothers try to take babies home who are likely to do badly. No, we’ll not handcuff them to the Unit...
although, actually, that’s not a terrible idea!
But we’ll insist that they stay, and offer to talk to the social worker
of the hospital to see if any assistance can be arranged. Not always an easy task when the hospital is
really strapped for cash, but we have to try.
