Praying for Penny

One of the great things of our "new" house is our close interaction with all the national people.... but it is hard at the same time, as the area we are living in is very, very poor. A river runs through the middle of our "neighborhood" and everyone uses the river for everything - bathing, washing clothes, drinking.... We (and our landlord) are the only ones with running water inside our houses - from a well (aka clean water!) - in our whole area.

When we moved into the house, we inh

erited a gardener, who lives right across the river from us. He has adopted his two little nieces, whose parents died. So this past summer and well into the fall, he would bring the little girls to our house when he did his gardening work. They were such miserable looking little kids - they would literally stand almost comatose while our boys rode their bikes around them. I'm pretty dense sometimes, so it took me a few weeks to see that they were sick, and that they were probably hungry, hence the glazed expressions. So I started feeding them whenever they came to our house. I would have my boys sit at our little table with them outside on our covered porch and they would all have "snack" together... which was always something like hard-boiled eggs and bananas and vitamins. :) (And, no, that's not what I normally give my own boys for snack!) We would do papaya and little soy bean cakes or peanut butter and whole wheat crackers... anything to get some nutrients in the little girls. Their dad caught on pretty quick and thanked me, saying that they only get one meal a day and it's usually just plain rice. But when you make just $20 a month, what can you do?

The girls warmed up slowly; started eating better and taking their vitamins without too much coercing. They started playing with the boys. The boys loved their friends and they played together really well, despite the language barrier. Lynn is about Elijah's age and Penny is 3.

Penny was still really sick, though. Her little tummy was puffed out like she was 9 months pregnant and getting her to eat enough "snack" was always a huge issue. After talking with an ex-pat nurse here in town, I gave her two different parasite treatments. They helped some, but still she had a huge tummy. The nurse said she was probably nutrient starved... she was getting enough food to keep her from "starving" but the lack of variety and actual vitamins was making her really sick.

To make a long story even longer.... (sorry, trying to keep it short!) their dad decided he wasn't making enough money and quit so he could "look for money" elsewhere. The girls came once or twice to get food right after he quit, and then stopped coming in October or so. I was concerned but busy, and busy won out.

Weeks passed and I saw Lynn a couple times. She would come looking for fruit that had fallen from our trees, but Penny was never with her. I would give her food and ask about Penny, to which she said "She's sick."

Right after Christmas, Lynn came again and I gave her the little treat bags we had made up for kids in the neighborhood with peanuts and dried milk and oranges. When she said Penny was still sick, I asked a few more questions and realized that Penny wasn't able to get of bed, walk around, or talk. Immediately Brant left with Elijah and went across the river to visit: it was the first time any of us had been to their house and it is just a little one room wooden shack - no electricity - about the size of a bedroom in the States. He said Penny was in pretty bad shape - conscious, but very, very sick. He talked with her dad at length and the dad agreed to take her to the hospital and he also agreed to come back and work for us. (His search for money didn't result in much).

After a couple weeks in and out of hospitals and seeing lots of different doctors they diagnosed Penny with tuberculosis in her abdomen. We were glad to hear it; not because it's a good diagnosis to receive, but because we feel it's accurate given all her symptoms. She has already started treatment, which is a very intense, powerful drug EVERY day for six months - if she misses one day, she has to start the entire treatment over again.

Her dad is back at our house gardening several days during the week. He says they have not missed a pill yet, but he is discouraged that she doesn't seem to be getting better. (It's only been two weeks, and can take months before she starts to improve).

The other day he asked Brant for money to buy her vitamins and came back tonight with a little box of 15 gummy things in Disney shapes that he paid $6 for! When you only make $20 a month, you can't spend $6 on candy that's supposed to be vitamins. I was furious and gave him a bottle of our really nice kid's vitamins from the States.

Anyways, it's been a really hard situation to sit back and watch... we feel helpless in so many ways and we just pray because it seems like the only thing we can do. On New Year's I wanted nothing more than to run across the river, take that little girl and bring her into our house and never let her go back across the river. I guess you might ask what would have been wrong with that plan? I don't know. There's a lot I don't understand and that doesn't seem fair to me. So we pray.

Here's a pic of Penny, taken last fall