anicette

It happened this morning. While no one was paying attention, when she saw her chance, Anicette slipped home to Jesus. I could write it a thousand times, using a thousand different words, and it still wouldn't make any sense at all. Airway obstruction. Possible metabolic disorder. Chronic malnutrition. None of those words brings her back, nothing comes close to explaining what happened in the corner of A Ward this morning.

I've done this before. I've had tiny brown babies between my hands, my thumbs crushing relentlessly at their chests, willing back spirits that had already flown. But this time, the entire time, someone's hands were on my back, steadying me as I bent to my task, and if it hadn't been for those hands I wouldn't have kept it together as long as I did.

Even so, by the time the team came, swift on the heels of the call, I knew we had to stop. Knew we had to keep going. Knew there was nothing I could do that was going to make it okay, no decision I was going to make that would come close to mending a mama's shattered heart.

And so we stopped. We lifted our hands and I gathered her into my arms, all bundled in an impossibly cheerful blanket. I've lost track of how many times I heard her mama cry her name when I brought her into the room where she was waiting. Je fait tout, she cried, over and over again. I did everything. Anicette. Why, Anicette. Anicette.

When I undressed her for her last bath, every one of her bones was visible beneath her skin, her spine like a row of tiny stones down her back, and all I could think of was what it must be for her in heaven now. To finally be able to run and play. To not feel pain. For the first time to know what it feels like to not be hungry.

For her mama, though, no such comfort. No release from a pain that's just starting all over again. Because I found out today that Zenabou had another child before Anicette, a child who also died from a mysterious sickness in which it would not eat. She's been through all this before, and now she's doing it with Anicette's little brother or sister growing inside her, a third child to be born into this broken family.

We've gathered together so many times today to pray. To ask for comfort in Zenabou's life. To pray for healing and peace. But most of all, we have gathered to speak life. Life into Zenabou, the second wife who has given her husband nothing but broken children, children who went back far too soon. Life into their village, where hatred and bitterness run deep. Life into the baby, safe for now but facing a world so twisted.


How long? How long before He speaks the words that will make it all whole again? How long do babies have to starve to death before this world has groaned enough?

Speak, Lord. Speak life.

This is how I remember Anicette. She spent most of the year with us in Benin, bouncing around between the ward and the hospitality centre, trying to find the magic formula that would let her gain enough weight for surgery. It worked. By the time she finally went to the operating room to fix her cleft lip, Anicette was a plump little baby, well-loved by her mama and every single nurse who laid eyes on her.

I was sitting in the office yesterday afternoon when our phlebotomist, Maggie, came looking for me. Can you help me draw blood on a tiny baby? I followed her willingly, always happy to do some clinical work in the middle of an admin day. When I opened the door, I saw one of our translators leaning over a crying baby wrapped in a piece of cloth. Only it wasn't a baby. It was a little girl, just a few months younger than my niece.

Anicette.

At fourteen months old, Ani is so underweight that she doesn't even register on the growth charts. Her skin is hanging off her bones, her cheeks just a shadow of their former plumpness. We don't know why. We can't figure out if it's because she hasn't been fed or if she's just not tolerating the food she's getting. We don't know what it is, but it's obvious that something is badly, badly wrong.

So we prayed and bundled her tight and I stuck a needle into a spidery little vein in her head, the only place I could find on her tiny, dehydrated body to get blood. She cried the entire time, weak little sobs that broke my heart. When it was all over, I picked her up, held her close and told her I was sorry.

I walked her back to her mama, unable to stop the tears from spilling down my cheeks. Because it shouldn't be like this. No child should be starving to death. No one should have to travel to another country just to find someone to help.

Please pray for baby Ani. She's here now, tucked into the corner of A Ward, the best place for her to be. But it breaks my heart to see her like this, to know that it might happen all over again when we leave.

Please pray.

At the end of the day, this is why I'm here. This is why I get up every morning and put on my blue scrubs and walk down the flight of stairs to work. Because somewhere down there, there is a little baby getting a bath in a plastic bowl, the steri strips on her top lip making her look for all the world like a little kitten. A little kitten with curious brown eyes.

A little kitten who's going to be able to face the world with an unbroken smile.

That's why.


(Again, photo by Meg Petock. She's awesome.)

I know I've already mentioned how busy we are down on the wards. We're so close to the end of the outreach, and it's the time when we're faced with the reality that if we don't do the surgeries we've planned, they may never happen. Every morning, when we meet to decide who will be admitted for the day, we're holding lives in our hands, trying to weigh futures against the already-bursting wards. Suffice it to say, this is not my favourite time of year.

But in amongst all the heartbreak, there is joy. I was working in B Ward this morning when I heard the drums start to pound in A. Four of the VVF ladies had come back to dress in fine, new dresses. They had come to put on makeup and string necklaces and bracelets. They had come to dance, because they were dry.

In the midst of the celebration, I needed something from the desk in A Ward, so I tried to quietly sneak in and out. One of the disciplers called me to the front of the room. Sis Alice, you will pray for one of our women. You will present her with her gifts.

I tried to say no, to go back to my work, but when I looked at the bag she was holding out to me, I realized how foolish it would be to pass up the opportunity. I took the package and looked over to the ladies, four women in all their finery, sitting proudly in front of a room of people where only weeks ago, they didn't dare to show their faces in public. On the far left I saw the beaming face and wiggling eyebrows of one of my favourite ladies, Irene. I headed to her chair with my gifts and my meager French and I tried to explain what I was giving her.

Scented soaps, so she can wash and know that, in Christ, she is clean. A Bible, so she can study the word of God. A mirror, so that she can know how beautiful she is. She grabbed me around my neck, planting a loud kiss on my cheek, and we bowed our heads together to pray. I prayed in English, but she seemed to know what I was saying, inserting loud Amens! when I asked God to give her joy, to make her a testimony to her village.

And then I slipped back out. Back to the relative quiet of B Ward and back to the endless work that waited for me.

Much later, around eight in the evening, when I was finally finishing up some extra paperwork that needed to be done yesterday, I stopped in D Ward on my way back to my cabin. There in the corner was a familiar face. Anicette and her mama have been Mercy Ships fixtures this outreach, spending long months on the wards and in the Hospitality Center. Ani was far too small for surgery when she first came to us, malnourished because of her cleft lip and palate. But under the watchful care of our feeding program, she's gained ounces and pounds.

Today, when I went to her bed to give her mama a hug, little Ani's lip sported some sutures, the steri strips over top of them making a smooth, unbroken line. She gazed up at me with her big dark eyes and held tight to the finger I offered. Her mama, Zenabou, called over another patient's visitor and relayed a question to him in Fon that he then asked me in French.

Is she beautiful?

My heart shattered into a million pieces, thinking of all the patients on the wards right now. All the VVF ladies, all the little kids with crossed eyes and huge tumors and burn scars. They all just want to know if they're beautiful, and so I answered for all of them. For Irene and Bidemi and Belvida and Pascaline. For Anicette.

Oui, elle est belle. Hier. Aujourd'hui. Demain. Elle est belle.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow. They are all so beautiful.


(Photo by Meg Petock.)