An ode to a little princess...

It’s been a week now since we arrived here and a very busy one too. We’ve tried to get through all the patients but more and more keep turning up every day. Arranging logistics and admin as well as our own medical clinics make it a round the clock job since we spend a lot of our evenings discussing, planning and organizing the whole project. At the moment we are the only representatives of the charity here so all the locals assume we have all the power and influence in decision making and all the knowledge of past, present and future. It’s a big responsibility but I think we’ve taken to it well. (Chris has given us Power of Attorney on most things, bless him but unless you feel fit to make these all important calls it’s quite overwhelming!)

The patients are brilliant! They make it so worthwhile. We’ve got almost 50 now and some of them are ever so lovely and helpful. We’ve gotten to know them really well now through football, milkshake time and clinics. We’ve been giving them this super calorific milkshake made from bananas, full fat milk, full fat milk powder, peanut butter and honey to try fatten them up a bit before surgery, the ultimate body builder!! It’s gone down a treat with most although some of the girls aren’t so keen; perhaps they clocked onto the calorific content!!!! And the hats……Terry and Chris gave us some wooly hats to bring over from England which some old ladies had knitted for the patients and boy were they popular! We offered them to everyone on the first day, and they all took one and haven’t taken them off their heads since. What’s more all the guys inc. fully grown adult men always seem to go for the fluorescent pink or lilac ones!!!!

Emotionally it’s been somewhat challenging but I guess I’ve found a way to keep focused on the job and remain professional and slightly distant during clinic to prevent lacrimal overspill! Maintaining a professional attitude helps get the job done, which in the long run is more beneficial to them anyway, although naturally there is an emotional amount of empathy expressed when you hear about some of their endurances and stories. One guy had his nose bitten off by a tiger when he was trying to save a friend under attack by the wild cat. Another was kicked in the face by horse, another burnt by an oil lamp! Outside of clinics is when we get chance to really bond with them through sports and playing and chatting to them in broken English and Amharic. I know we’re not supposed to have favourites and I’ m trying hard to remain neutral but there’s this one little girl who’s stolen my heart and crushed it up into tiny little pieces. My little Mistikigna……she is really, the most adorable, cutest little girl ever. She’s so pretty and has the sweetest little voice and the most beautiful smile, but of course that’s only one side of her face. The other side she keeps covered with her bright little scarf; you wouldn’t want to see the other side of her face; the side that poverty destroyed. She really gets me every time. The thing that angers me so much is that she would have had to be so, so malnourished for this terrible disease to have been able to take over and for so long to have let it get so far and to have consumed so much of her beautiful little face. And surrounded by such ignorant or uniformed people, or even neglected by them for them not to have known where to find any help until now. (Not that it’s their fault, some of the simpler rural communities here are so isolated and truly a million miles away from any of the common knowledge or advances that we in the West have come to take for granted.) That’s my little Mistikigna…..In Arabic the word “Miskina” means poor girl and is colloquially used to say “awww poor thing”. Her name sounds so close to it and she really does fit the phrase poor little thing. I’m counting down the days until I’ll be able to see her reveal the other half of her face and pray that we can do something to help her and that she recovers well. Please pray with me.

Hiba