A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [68]
“Our doctor said the illness can’t be treated at the hospital,” she argues. “It needs local medicine.”
“He’s severely malnourished,” I insist. “I would like to take you and the baby to Panzi Hospital.”
“I took the baby to the hospital and the doctor told me to take him to traditional doctors,” Mama says. “Since I took him, the situation is getting better and better.”
To be clear, I get how totally, radically inappropriate it is for me to march into this woman’s home and tell her how to take care of her children. I’m no doctor. I don’t know this family. I remember my college seminar debates on the feminist empowerment model. It’s just that I don’t care about these issues right now. The baby is dying.
“How many children do you have?”
“Eight children.”
“How many have died?”
“None.”
She’s annoyed. But she dresses him anyway, avoiding my eyes as she wraps him in a little white dress, then a ruffly white curtain.
On the way out I notice her next-youngest, a little girl with thin blonde hair, a snotty nose, heavy bags under eyes, and a balloon belly. As long as I’m shamelessly meddling in this woman’s business, I ask, “Is this baby sick too? Does she need to see a doctor?”
“The malnutrition is due to the little difference in age between the two,” Maurice surmises. True enough, with this many babies and Mama’s already slender frame, milk is likely scarce.
Mama doesn’t say a word, but wipes little Nina’s face clean, undresses and washes her, and rubs oil all over her body, trying to give her child a healthy glow. She grabs a cotton party dress with faded yellow flowers and dresses the little girl. Nina is not amused.
Nina shoots me the death stare on the ride to Panzi. She looks like she hasn’t cracked a smile her whole little life. I’m still waiting for the pee to dry—it covers my whole lap. At least I’m in all black today.
THE NURSE AT THE CENTER for malnourished children is not impressed. They examine the kids, slinging them around—much to Nina and Bonjour’s horror—and stretching them out on a board to measure their height while they scream and cry. Mama strips off Bonjour’s angel outfit and the medical staff wants to put him in a hanging sack to weigh him. I hand him over, feeling jumpy. “Support his neck. Watch his neck. Gentle!” He’s swallowed by the bag. It covers his face, while half his hip hangs out, as they drop him on the scale like a hunk of meat.
They hand him back to me. I rock him as he cries. He pees for a second time. I am truly, deeply soaked in malnourished-baby pee. Totally worth it.
“For this one, it is no problem to be treated,” The nurse says, motioning to the girl. She wags her pen at Bonjour, “But for this one, because he was ill he became this way. It is only if the mother takes care of him, feeding him.”
I’m dumbfounded. “They’re not going to treat this child?”
“The problem is to be well fed.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I say. “That’s why we came to the center for feeding malnourished children. How do we solve that problem?”
“The mother can find maybe milk from the breast.”
I’m shocked. “So they can’t do anything for this baby? ‘Cause the baby’s really small?”
He’s really screaming too.
“Being small is the fact of illness,” she says again. “The baby has been treated. We have nothing to do for the baby. If the baby becomes ill, we will treat him. But the baby is normal.”
See? The baby’s fine. Next time, mind your own business.
It’s all I can do to not lunge across the table and strangle this nurse. “This is not normal.”
The nurse gives me a “piss-off ” shrug and moves on.
My phone buzzes; it’s a text from Dr. Roger, who hosted our earlier visit to Panzi and today ushered us to the feed center between surgeries. “It’s a good thing you do. I think you saved that baby’s life. If you have any problem. . . .”
Dr. Roger meets us following a Cesarean. We breeze past a long line in the corridor into a private examination room. Dr. Roger