Daniel's Story

The tiny form in the hospital bed appeared to have arrived from an African famine rather than an Andean mountain. Never have I seen a child so skeletal and mal-nourished and never have I been so surprised to see a child so sick, live. Daniel’s distressed Quechua mother really spoke only Quechua, with just a little Spanish so from the start it was clear that communicating was going to be difficult. With a little help from the mother of the boy in the adjacent bed, I learned that Daniel, nearly three, had fallen from a horse and suffered a severe head injury leaving him paralysed, all his muscles contracted, stiff as a board and with just a little movement of his head, eyes and mouth. The poor little mite didn’t look as though he’d last another day to be honest, but I went downstairs to the room in the Burns Unit where we store our toys and clothes and found him a little jumper, more to try and show some kindness to his mother than anything.

A couple of days later. to my surprise, Daniel was still there. He didn’t look any better, and his mum was still very distressed. I still hadn’t got a clue how to help. I started to get to know the mum of the boy alongside and learned that Daniel’s mum had five children, but two had already died and she had a 9 year old at home with cerebral palsy. She had a Quechua Bible with her that she couldn’t read, but was a Christian and had a church she belonged to in her community. Over the next few weeks, Jenny O and I visited Daniel, and Jenny, with her OT background, had a few ideas to help him – some alpaca fleece between his knees to stop pressure sores, the beginnings of stretching his little clenched hands and arms, a musical toy. 

His mum left at one point to go back to her other child, so that week Jenny went in every day. That week he seemed to have a respiratory infection and we thought that would be the end for him, but he surprisingly fought it off and recovered. He seemed to be losing weight rather than gaining it, although his weight chart was going up and down between 7 and 9 kg rather randomly – we’re  not sure they were actually weighing him! One week I came across a visiting American doctor downstairs and asked him to have a quick assessment of Daniel. He said the injury was extremely bad, but it was too early to give up hope of any sort of recovery. It was an interesting exercise in three-way translation as I went from English to Spanish, and the grandpa of the girl in the next bed translated from Spanish to Quechua!

Daniel’s mum was starting to give up hope of being able to care for Daniel back in her community, so the hospital started to look for a children’s home place for him. However, the local home that is best for rehabilitation said they weren’t interested in him because he wouldn’t improve. And then all the other places that might have taken him were either full or said his needs were too great for them to handle. At this point we were afraid Daniel’s mum might just disappear and leave him - which would have been the worst thing for Daniel as, apart from being abandoned, he would have been stuck in the hospital for weeks, possibly months, while they waited for a place to be available. Thankfully Mum stayed, and came round to the idea that maybe she could take Daniel home after all. By this time Jenny had convinced her that she could pick him up, and he did seem to be pleased to be in his mum’s arms rather than stuck in his bed full-time. Robyn had also ventured back into the ward (she’d been thrown out a few weeks before basically for being too helpful, i.e.’ interfering’!) to help us with Daniel. 

Finally a relative of Daniel’s dad arrived who it seemed was able to accompany them back to their community, if we could help with the bus fares. This we were pleased to do as we had been trying to find someone who could do the 12 hour plus journey with them but to no avail. Robyn helped them get a letter from the hospital to the nearest community clinic (which I think is still several hours walk from where they live) – we hope the staff there will give some sort of help. And I wrote a letter to their church, trying to encourage them to support Daniel’s family – not sure if that will have helped, but there is so much superstition in the countryside about kids with disabilities being cursed that I thought a letter might be better than nothing.

We don’t expect to see Daniel again in Cusco. We hope and pray that his family love him and care for him as best they can, and that they will remember the advice given to his mum about feeding him, turning him and doing some gentle exercises with him. At least we were happy to see Daniel stay with his mum instead of becoming yet another abandoned child left to whichever overcrowded children’s home that would take him.

What would be great is to have some type of outreach worker who could support mums like this who, with help, could keep their children and learn how to care for them. The biggest obstacle to this is literally an obstacle, or rather quite a few obstacles – 4000m+ high mountains and treacherous unpaved roads! But not all the kids come from places as inaccessible as Daniel, so perhaps there is some mileage in the idea. The best solution for these children cannot be to leave them amongst total strangers in an institution.  It would be fantastic to contribute to reducing the constant flow of abandoned children!

August News from Cusco

Life is full of contrasts at the moment. In the course of a day I am watching tears of both joy and heartbreak at the Olympics, enjoying the fun moments with four kids and then despairing of ever being able to parent them adequately, and holding the hand of a little boy with a severe head injury in the hospital and praying that he will just speak a word or move a muscle.

For all of us from the UK I guess the Olympics are something special this time. Maybe there are enough people writing articles and giving their opinions, but here are a few thoughts as we watch from Peru. I loved the Opening Ceremony and also feel proud of the GB public as I see the huge crowds lining the route of the cycling races, as I am sure they will do for the marathons and other events that can be seen from the streets. We were really very disappointed not to be able to come home during this summer to see our families and friends and to experience the torch relay, the atmosphere of a home games and perhaps see some of the events. But how does that disappointment compare to that of people who could have made the teams but didn’t, or who haven’t managed to perform to the level they hoped? As an ex-athlete, I can understand how these ‘failures’ can be devastating after the years of training and the sacrifices made, but when it comes to it, as Michael Johnson has just said after watching a heartbreaking interview with a disappointed judo player, ‘It’s a game, it’s not life, it’s not the end of everything’ . When you regain perspective, there are more important things in life.

Our ‘more important thing’ this year has of course been to bring home H and K, and the relief of having them with us somewhat offsets the disappointment of not being with our families this summer.  We have needed all the perseverance and patience we possess, and more, and the sacrifices that are being made by ourselves and our families can be difficult – but we maintain that giving two little girls a family is worth more than an Olympic medal, even when we are dealing with a face coloured black with a felt tip pen, orange peel dropped into a brother’s drinking cup, a constant stream of ‘I want... I want... because I want ... because I want ...’ and various other interesting 3 year old behaviours! K does have us laughing sometimes too – we bought some candyfloss the other day and she promptly grabbed a handful and started to wipe her face with it – she honestly thought it was cotton wool! H just said, ’Yuck, this is a strange thing!’

H continues to be a relatively calm little girl, keen to please. She is showing a talent for dancing and artistic things and was one of the fastest skippers in her class on sports day – great for her to be one of the best at something after struggling with the academic side somewhat. She is still quite lost about many of the normal things of life, but she’ll get there in the end! I’ m just printing out a calendar for her as days of the week, months and years are rather a mystery to her. I spent five minutes before bedtime tonight trying to explain that today was Wednesday, which means that there will be two more days before the weekend, and that will be when we can buy an ice cream. And, no, it won’t be Christmas for a while yet!

The older three kids are very patient with K, although exasperated with her at times too. Sammy is especially good with her and there have been some sweet moments when he picks her up after she’s tripped over, or reads her a story, including the other night not only reading her Bible story but translating it from English to Spanish as he went along. Ben was helping Hilda with her maths homework today – he, of course, had raced through it himself and obviously felt very clever being able to teach his sister how to do it! He and H are also having some fun mini-volleyball matches on our little patio (at least it’s fun as long as Ben wins – fortunately H is not quite so competitive!)

Our regular ‘Nature Club’ outings continue to be a bit of a sanity-saver – the kids love being out and they play better and very cooperatively when chasing sticks down streams or building shelters out of branches. H and K are getting fitter and showing the potential to be quite sporty, which will help with fitting into our active family life! (See the ‘Club NaturaNiños’ facebook page for some of our photos.) 

The main work responsibility I have retained is hospital visiting – partly because it fits in timetable-wise and partly because that was part of my main ‘call’ to Peru and something to which I feel I have never been able to give 100%. Hospital visiting is also a big part of Jenny O’s work, who I’m mentoring, so it’s great to be able to go together some days. At the complete opposite end of the spectrum to Bradley Wiggins et al is a little boy, Daniel, who is almost completely paralysed with a bad head injury. It seems that he fell off a horse, although details are sketchy as his mum only speaks Quechua so we are mostly relying on whoever is around to translate. (I’m still trying to learn a bit of Quechua, but just vocab on the internet at the moment as I can’t fit in classes.) Daniel is nearly three and as is so tiny that he looks like a famine victim. We’re not sure how malnourished he was before he came into hospital, but there must be something seriously wrong with how he is being looked after for him to be in this state. We have seen this occasionally before with kids who have been abandoned or who have Quechua parents with no resources – it seems that the hospital expects them to die and so don’t ‘waste’ time or money on them – and then of course they are more-or-less bound to die. And the child and parents are helpless as they don’t understand what is going on, have no knowledge of what could be possible and have no money to pay for even the simplest things such as nappies. Daniel’s mum has gone home for a few days (she has a daughter with special needs) and we hope and pray she will come back. She is actually a Christian and had a Quechua Bible with her last week, but she can’t read so it isn’t too much use to her. I took a sheet of the Quechua alphabet in for her and the mum of another little boy was going to try and help her get started on reading. We are very limited in what we can do for Daniel, but he seems to like it when we hold his tiny hands and stroke his face, and he makes an attempt to cry when we leave.

The new group we have started with teenagers from our church is the other main responsibility I have in these few months. They meet in our house as the church building is more of a tent than a building and would be very cold in the evenings. We have been pleased how committed the group has been and have been using Youth Alpha materials. Recently we watched a film about a Christian sports coach and they seemed quite inspired by that. We want to capitalise on this by helping them plan an outreach for kids and maybe some sports-related activities as a means of evangelism too. It is clear that goal setting and planning isn’t a big part of the culture here. People find it hard to look more than a week ahead. There is something to be learned from this – the whole idea of living in the ‘now’, in the present – but there are obvious problems if you never plan longer term. We want to help our group to see that they may not be able to grow the group from 10 to 30 in a week, but maybe they can in a year if prayer and outreach is planned month by month, bit by bit.

One of the most encouraging aspects of Roland’s work at the moment is the starting of a new group of clients in a more rural area outside of Cusco. Cusco now has many micro-credit organisations whilst outside the city it is much harder to start or grow a small business. There is a still a very important role for Kallarisunchis in town of course as no one else is offering the training and Christian discipleship that they offer, but it is always good to look for where there is most need too. This first group of clients outside Cusco has a good link with a local church as the first member to be connected with Kallarisunchis is a Christian. Her Pastor is really keen to be involved so the ‘ideal’ Kallarisunchis model of helping people with material need and linking them with a church that can follow up regarding their spiritual need has started off well in this small Andean town.

Roland’s role as treasurer of the Peru team for Latin Link has been a significant part of his work again this year. He has involvement with the chain of bookshops and the large school in Arequipa, both of which are overseen by the mission, a children’s home headed up by Latin Link workers (Huaraz), and finances relating to all sorts of church projects across Peru where Latin Link and the supporting British, European and other international churches are partnering, working with all ages from small children to the elderly.

If you are wondering when we will next be in the UK, so are we! Our latest plan is to try and come during the second half of 2013, but that largely depends on the judge in charge of the girls’ case, and whether he will let them leave the country before they are adopted. We’ll possibly have more news about that after Christmas.

Cusco Olympics 2012

We were a bit disappointed not to be in the UK for London 2012, but we saw a good selection on-line and the kids were interested in many different sports and had a go at quite a few themselves - here are highlights of our own Cusco Olympics 2012!