A baby dies, and one is newborn

A death

Last Sunday night, the 16^th, a premature baby that was staying at the babies home, passed away in her sleep. It was a massive shock for all, especially for the carer who found her, and had only just put her down not an hour before. It was the first death at the home. The staff were hysterical, wailing and throwing themselves about, and took some calming. All this I heard about on Monday morning, as I came into work. On my birthday. But I could feel something was wrong as soon as I walked through the door. The place was quiet. There was no chatter. There was no music playing. No one said good morning. It was not a day to be happy about being older.

The insensitivity of the emergency services was surprising, despite me knowing how ill acquainted Ugandans are with urgency. When we rang in to tell the hospital a baby had died and we wanted to bring her in, they said we might as well wait until the morning . The obviously didn’t feel it was strange having a dead child in the home through the night, with 24 other young, unsettled children.

The autopsies were fairly inconclusive. It could have been asphyxiation, but they don’t know. Put down to cot death. Just…one of those things. As most of the children that come into the home are quite weakened when they arrive, malnourished or abused, her death probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. I hope we’re all better prepared the next time such a terrible thing happens, which it will. Like I said before, life and death sit uncomfortably close together here.

Into the Country

Mud huts

Abandoned house

To keep in view what the end hope is for all the children that come through the babies home, I went out on Friday on some home visits. Two little boys, re-homed with family members just before Christmas. I went with a social worker, on the first visit to the boys, to see how they were going.

One young child, around 2 years old, is now out in Mityana, a 90 min journey from Kampala, living with an aunt and 3 other young children. The aunt and her husband live very basically with the children, in a very small brick hut in a field next to their crops. The red beans of coffee plants grow about the house, a source of income for the family. We brought with us a bag of fruits – a hand of bananas, a pineapple – for which they were very thankful. I imagined that fruit would be easy for people in the country to obtain, but it’s not the case. The land is sectioned out. If it’s not on your land, it’s not yours. The young boy was overcoming malaria, and his eyes were slightly discoloured. But aside from that he was healthy, and the other children were happy (if not lean), and fascinated by the presence of mzungu in their home.

The young boy we’d come to see had been quiet but close to us the whole time we were in the house. As we prepared to leave, he suddenly started to cry. He remembered where we were from, and the toys and playtimes and food and fun he had had at the home. After that, life in a hut with a dirt floor in the middle of a field must be hard to adjust to…

Missing

We journeyed out west another 150km or so to the Kyenjojo district, to make our second home visit. The boy, just one year old, had gone back to live with his father in the country. The roads we travelled to get out to the hut, through the banana plantations and thick brush, were no kinds of roads at all. The car was bounced from one axel to another, juddering and hitting rocks as we made our way. We finally arrived at the father’s hut, feeling motion sick and battered, to find the house deserted. The village children came running down the track to us at the abandoned house, barefoot, ragged clothes filthy. They told us the boy had left with his father. This was worrying. Why had they left? Where were they, and why hadn’t they told us, as they were supposed to, where they had moved to? We found a few adults in the village to ask, but everyone seemed reluctant to give their whereabouts. This worried us even further. After a lot of coaxing and reassuring we didn’t want to get anyone in trouble and just wanted to see the child, one person told us about another person who might be able to lead us to the child.

The term ‘wild goose chase’ came to mind. After some 2 hours, a lot of telephone calling, and another 50km (a lot spent going round in circles it felt) we finally rendezvoused with a guy outside a trading hut, who jumped in the car with us. He led us to a small house, hidden in the middle of a wooded area. Chickens, and lots of kids roamed barefoot around another mud hut.

Great grandma's house

The lady of the house, elderly but fit and also barefoot, put out chairs and a bench for us to sit on, and the little boy we’d come to see emerged from the house. He was fine. Thanks God. The woman was the boy’s great grandma, full of grace and humility. She bowed when we passed over the fruit we’d bought.

The father had moved the boy so that he could be babysat whilst he went out to work. He had bought a motorbike and was working in the small township some km’s away as a boda-boda driver.

We said our goodbyes with a promise to come back in a few months, and headed back out on to the road. A journey of more than 5 hours lay ahead of us. Around 6pm, we finally managed to stop for lunch. A rolex – fried egg & veg in a chapatti roll, before ploughing on through the night back to Kampala. The car steering was ruined – the off roading had killed it – and the car swung from left to right across the roads.  Many of the ‘roads’ we travelled were half complete. No tarmac laid, only rocks and dust. There are also no road lamps in Kampala. We had been driving since 8am and were tired. Our backs were sore from being jarred. It was not a relaxing journey home. I got home just after 9, and was so thankful to be alive. A cup of tea, a wash of the face was all I could manage before I took my rest. Not the typical kind of Friday feeling…