Over the course of my time in Togo I have also been visiting the paediatric surgical wards of a local hospital once a fortnight. CHU Tokein is the university hospital, it is the largest hospital in Togo, and offers care to those who can afford to pay the fees. (This is normally the case with African healthcare - there is not normally a governmental free healthcare system). The three wards we visit have around 12 beds each for paediatric patients, who are there for a variety of different treatments from burn victims, to zimi (motorbike taxi) accidents, to falling out of trees, to encephalitis, to tiny new babies. Some look rather healthy, others looked close to death being severely underweight and obviously very sick.
For some this is a difficult place to come visit, the level of care here is much lower than in a developing nation. Some weeks we would not see any hospital personnel on the wards at all, occasionally you would see a nurse, but never more than this. Admittedly we were visiting in the evening, however, this was over a two hour period, in a place where some of the children were incredibly ill. The wards were generally just rooms with beds, much like a dormitory. For those with broken legs they were often splinted and in tension over a pulley at the end of the bed with weights at the end, and I saw maybe three drips in all the times I visited. There wasn't any monitoring equipment or blankets and food is not provided, you have to go and buy your food and bring it in. I can understand why people find this distressing, but for me we visited for a reason. Not to alleviate this obvious suffering and lack of resources, but to bring some distraction from the surroundings, some love and some fun. We can't fix the worlds problems, in fact we can't fix the problems of the small group of people we met at the hospital, but we could demonstrate love and bring them hope, the rest we leave to God.
At the hospital we would sometimes do a story, getting the mums and siblings to help us act it out, and we would play. I can remember the joy of Floron and Sabine as I spent nearly an hour jumping around batting balloons about with them. This was nothing difficult, but in comparison to the mundane day to day life in the hospital it was something special for them, and after being in the hospital for a few months already anything different was nice. We blew bubbles, coloured, played games, and made them laugh as we attempted to dance African! And the effect this had on uplifting the children and the families was obvious. Even our partners, the Assemblies of God church, who were originally somewhat bemused by our antics and concerned that this was not the way to minister to these people, gradually saw how much joy this brought the children. And eventually we came to an understanding of how we had been blessed with the opportunity to reach out to the children in this way and how they had the gift of the language to speak to the families and minister to them this way, a wonderful combination.
As the weeks went on, I had more and more opportunities to speak to the families, particularly as we built up relationships with them. Sometimes Emmanuel, our Mercy Ministries translator, would translate for me, sometimes I just made myself understood with my limited French and their limited English. And ultimately the gift of prayer transcends all languages - to know that I was praying for their child, even if they could not understand everything I said, brought comfort.
And for me it was an incredible blessing to experience the love within some of these families. In a culture where the disabled are shunned and illness is often believed to be the result of curses, to see parents who look down on their child in their arms with complete and utter love for them, and a child who looks up obviously knowing their loving parents was a joy. To see such unconditional love in desperate circumstances speaks volumes and always uplifts my spirit.
On the whole we did not take photos at the hospital. A place where people are ever changing and are sick is not the place to take photos, however, on our final week there we did get a photo outside the hospital and with a patient who had been on the wards for the whole time we had been visiting. Floron had been on the ward for over a year, but had been moved to an outpatient 'dormitory' on the last week that we visited. At the start he had been naked on the bed, with huge sores on his legs which were not healing. The doctors did not know what had caused them, nor how to adequately treat it. However, over our last few visits he had been up and about (although he did still struggle to walk after so long in bed) and had clothes on and generally looked hugely better.
Goodbye CHU Tokein Hospital and those who we worked with from Assemblies of God church.
For some this is a difficult place to come visit, the level of care here is much lower than in a developing nation. Some weeks we would not see any hospital personnel on the wards at all, occasionally you would see a nurse, but never more than this. Admittedly we were visiting in the evening, however, this was over a two hour period, in a place where some of the children were incredibly ill. The wards were generally just rooms with beds, much like a dormitory. For those with broken legs they were often splinted and in tension over a pulley at the end of the bed with weights at the end, and I saw maybe three drips in all the times I visited. There wasn't any monitoring equipment or blankets and food is not provided, you have to go and buy your food and bring it in. I can understand why people find this distressing, but for me we visited for a reason. Not to alleviate this obvious suffering and lack of resources, but to bring some distraction from the surroundings, some love and some fun. We can't fix the worlds problems, in fact we can't fix the problems of the small group of people we met at the hospital, but we could demonstrate love and bring them hope, the rest we leave to God.
At the hospital we would sometimes do a story, getting the mums and siblings to help us act it out, and we would play. I can remember the joy of Floron and Sabine as I spent nearly an hour jumping around batting balloons about with them. This was nothing difficult, but in comparison to the mundane day to day life in the hospital it was something special for them, and after being in the hospital for a few months already anything different was nice. We blew bubbles, coloured, played games, and made them laugh as we attempted to dance African! And the effect this had on uplifting the children and the families was obvious. Even our partners, the Assemblies of God church, who were originally somewhat bemused by our antics and concerned that this was not the way to minister to these people, gradually saw how much joy this brought the children. And eventually we came to an understanding of how we had been blessed with the opportunity to reach out to the children in this way and how they had the gift of the language to speak to the families and minister to them this way, a wonderful combination.
As the weeks went on, I had more and more opportunities to speak to the families, particularly as we built up relationships with them. Sometimes Emmanuel, our Mercy Ministries translator, would translate for me, sometimes I just made myself understood with my limited French and their limited English. And ultimately the gift of prayer transcends all languages - to know that I was praying for their child, even if they could not understand everything I said, brought comfort.
And for me it was an incredible blessing to experience the love within some of these families. In a culture where the disabled are shunned and illness is often believed to be the result of curses, to see parents who look down on their child in their arms with complete and utter love for them, and a child who looks up obviously knowing their loving parents was a joy. To see such unconditional love in desperate circumstances speaks volumes and always uplifts my spirit.
On the whole we did not take photos at the hospital. A place where people are ever changing and are sick is not the place to take photos, however, on our final week there we did get a photo outside the hospital and with a patient who had been on the wards for the whole time we had been visiting. Floron had been on the ward for over a year, but had been moved to an outpatient 'dormitory' on the last week that we visited. At the start he had been naked on the bed, with huge sores on his legs which were not healing. The doctors did not know what had caused them, nor how to adequately treat it. However, over our last few visits he had been up and about (although he did still struggle to walk after so long in bed) and had clothes on and generally looked hugely better.
Goodbye CHU Tokein Hospital and those who we worked with from Assemblies of God church.
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