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Shama Shama was at death's door when I first got back here in early February. She had been bed ridden for some time. We prayed and got her to a doctor right away. She soon recovered. Then her mom fell ill. Her condition continued to deteriorate. Shama comes by the house here fairly often and I would continually ask how her mother was. "Pa pi mal" was always the response. For those of you who have never been to Haiti, that means "not too bad." I had heard rumors from other kids in the area that her mother was in pretty bad shape. Shama, 11, didn't seem to be too consumed with the situation. I did not know the mother, but since Shama is already fatherless, I decided we (Bobcat, Manno, Jaklin, and myself) should go see for ourselves. It was a new neighborhood to me. The feeling was oppressive, like a weight in the air. We stood at the foot path that was the entrance into the scattered huts and depressing poverty. We were about to walk into the mouth of a giant beast. No wonder Shama likes coming to the Happy House so often. This place was like the opposite of all that is good in the Happy House. I was surprised to find several people that I knew there. Unfortunately the first face I recognized was that of a girl I had known from a few years back. Margie. I had not seen her for several years. From a distance, I could see her leaning over a little fire beside a small hut made of wood, mud, cardboard and plastic. Her hair was an unkept mess. Her clothes were loose, dirty and torn. She looked up from the fire. Her eyes were unfocused but she recognized me after all this time. As she stood to make her way to me, I saw that she was pregnant. She was fairly emotionless. Her hands and cheeks were black with smudges of charcoal from the wood that she was making the fire with. "Bon jou fre Ed." She is so tiny. Even at 15, she can't be 5 feet tall. She is certainly a prisoner of this neighborhood from Hell. And she has a child on the way. Her ex-boyfriend set her up with some of his friends for a wild night in the jungle. She went along willingly. They don't know which one is the father. She doesn't seem disappointed with the way her life has turned out so far. She was never expecting anything. No dreams, no goals, no hopes, no Prince Charmings. She's not happy or sad. She's not crying out for freedom. She's just existing in the present moment. Breathing this bad air in and out in the belly of this beast. It's like since her birth, she has never come all the way alive. We can't stay. We need to get walking and check on Shama's mother. Margie's small pregnant form, hunched over that little fire in front of that most pathetic hut, continues to haunt me. We needed to stay focused. If Shama's mother is okay, we'll come back and see if there is anything we can do for Margie. We made our way deeper into the belly of the beast. Long streams of people, many of them zombie like, making their way to and from their business and affairs. The sun was getting low and the canopy of tree branches and vines made it darker than it should be at 5:30 PM. We were drawing a small group of followers along the way. There were a few kids that I recognized from school and church and from the Happy House. Also a couple of parents. We finally arrived outside the hut that was our destination. The hard dirt yard was full with people. NOT good. My mind flashed back to Montina so many years ago. We went to see her the next day after receiving news that she was gravely ill. When we arrived, the yard was full of people. We knew that she had not made it through the night. Montina's little body was wrapped in a sheet on the floor. Manno and I exchanged glances. The door of the hut was jammed with onlookers. They opened the way for us and we entered. Shama's mother was still breathing, but her body was emaciated. She was mumbling in and out of delirium. "Mwe pa gen fos anko. M pa kapab anko." Translated, "I don't have anymore strength. I can't anymore." As soon as we had entered, the people closed in behind us. The heat was absolutely suffocating. I don't think I would have made it through the night in such conditions. We were in a small hut that was divided into two apartments. We were in the windowless back half. What little air and light might have made its way in through the door, was blocked by the crowd of onlookers. There was nothing else that needed doing at the moment, so many came out to wait for, and see, the last breath expelled. Their very presence was helping usher in the end. The word was that someone had sent a curse on her. There was nothing else that could be done. There was an older preacher in the room there. He seemed to have a good spirit. They had prayed already. We prayed again and then asked the mother's mother if we could take her to the hospital. I felt that we were going to snatch this lady from the belly of the beast and escape with her. Shama was not going to be an orphan. Shama's grandmother had already been crying most fo the afternoon. She too, was waiting for the end to come. A resigned hopelessness seemed to add lines to her tired face. She had been in the fight for life too, but now the fight was coming to and end. Her daughter was drifting in and out of sensiblity. This is how it was going to end. Maybe even how it was meant to end. Some dark unseen forces were here to claim their plate of food. It's always a steep uphill battle when you try to convince folks that the sickness is not a curse but a treatable disease, if indeed it is. Many folks here, especially country folks, remain very skeptical of the white man's medicines and his medical ways. Especially with more serious illnesses. Some of the more open folks have decided that there are two kinds of sicknesses. There are the ones the doctors can treat, thus meaning it is not a curse, and the ones that the doctors can't treat, meaning that it is a curse. As I have written before this creates much strife in a country that doesn't need any more division than it already has. When your mother dies from a "curse," you will want to know who put the curse on her. Everyone you know becomes a suspect. The curse could have been a matter of revenge against the one that is sick. It could be to get at a family member of the one that is sick. They say sometimes a stepmother can kill her husband's child to get at him. It may just be a matter of selling the life and soul of someone to the devil in exchange for a favor. Thus goes the folklore that so many people live and die by. I call it folklore. They don't. To them it's an unwritten Bible. We had persuaded them to let us get her out of there and take her to the hospital. She was already so close to dead that no one would blame us if she didn't make it. That IS an important issue. The morbid onlookers would be robbed of her swan dive, so some of them may not have been too happy. Others thought it was useless to try to save her. The curse was eating her and too far along to reverse. For most folks though, I don't think they were involved enough to care much either way. At any rate, this was just a piece of time late in an afternoon. A few moments that wouldn't be stored in anyone's memory. I was/am amazed at the willingness of the people to let the lady die without doing everything possible first. For the part of most of the poor, they seem quite surrendered to "fate." There was little or no attempt to turn this thing around. It was mostly a matter of just waiting to see whatever would come. I read an article some time back that fascinated me. It dealt with how people handle the first few minutes of emergency situations of life and death. For example, a plane is going down. What will be the normal reaction of the passengers whose lives may be about to end abruptly? Studies were done of several such situations, including burning buildings, sinking ships, and even the World Trade Center. Generally, nearly 15% of folks totally panic and flip out. Another 15% compose themselves and logically search for an escape, if there is one. But, the vast majority, 70% just kind of go numb as if it is all a dream. The scene becomes surreal. Many lives have been lost due to inaction. There were stories of passengers crawling out of a burning plane on a runway, while many other passengers just sat strapped in their seats unable to process the situation or react. Shama's mother was unable to walk so a couple of her family members wrapped her in a sheet and carried her to the car. Manno had gone back to the car and tried to use the footpaths to get the car closer to the house. By now the crowd had swelled and there was lots of talking and whispering and curiosity. With the exception of a few folks there, we weren't anybody's heroes for our efforts, but I had a good feeling in my heart. We were rescuing this lady from the belly of the beast. She was lowered into the back seat as her head rolled side to side. Several people wanted to go along for the ride, but we only had room for a few family members. Anyone else that wanted to see more, would have to come to the hospital. As we were leaving a man came up to me wanting help to put his son in school. Soon others came presenting needs. I explained that we were busy at the moment. We left the hut and its yard full of people behind us. The road was rough but we got back to the point of entry. There on the little hill, Margie was still tending her little fire, fanning the flames under a black pot. Her small hut now a silhouette behind her. Her problems, like so many folks here, are massive. You can't really do much to help her other than to just totally take on her whole life and it's burdens. I knew her when she was so little. I remember her in school with her little red uniform. I have pictures of her. I remember her smiling face when her life was still ahead of her. The car went on out of the mouth of the beast and she faded. Shama's mother's moaning in the back seat snapped me back into the present. On the way to the hospital we decided to try a stop at the Cubans' house. There are actually many Cuban doctors working in Haiti. Including Ti Goave. They are part of a friendship program between Cuba and Haiti. They work for free. You do have to buy your own medicine and prescriptions. I don't run in to them much. They mostly stay around the hospital and most of them are fairly guarded when it comes to talking to Americans. I have dealt with a few that were very friendly, but most seem uneasy. We are like children of two families that don't get along. I did not know the doctors at this house but hoped maybe they would be some of the friendly ones. I did not like the idea of bothering them at home, but the Haitians assured me it would be okay. Being that there is no emergency room at the hospital, and no guarantee that you will find a doctor, I was hoping that maybe we could get a quick diagnosis and thus a headstart on getting treatment once at the hospital. We pulled up in front of the house they are renting. The front gate was not locked. We could hear Spanish music coming from inside the house. Must be the right place. We knocked on the big iron gates. No answer. We knocked again. Just Spanish music in return. Shama's mother was coughing and moaning in the back seat. I felt there was a big ticking clock hanging over her life. Maybe we should just go through the gates and up to the front door and knock. Then I thought about a big ticking clock hanging over our life if we got to the front door and these were not some of the friendly Cubans. We stayed at the gate a little longer. We yelled out in Creole, Spanish, and English. Just more music. They couldn't hear us. Finally we went in and up to the door and knocked on wood. Literally. We yelled out some more. A lady came to the door. I knew enough Spanish to ask her if she spoke English or Creole. "Solomente Espanol." "Only Spanish." I doubt that my spelling on that is el correcto, but my heart is in the right place. Eventually a man that looked to be a little younger than me appeared. We were trying to tell him in Creole that we had a very sick lady in the car. He would not let us continue in Creole. It had to be Spanish. He was neither committing himself to a smile or a frown and it was hard to read him. I was being as friendly as I know how to be. "Tenemos...una dama....uh...en el carro.....Por favor......vienne...uh....." By this point, I felt that they were amusing themselves as Manno and I put every Spanish word we knew together and tried futilely to make sense. I do remember quite a few words from Honduras, but none of them were the words I was needing at the moment. With lots of pointing and gesturing, we got him to go get his stethoscope and come out to the car. He immediately began talking Creole with Shama's mother and her Haitian friends. So he COULD talk Creole. He was enjoying seeing an American struggle to speak. After examining the lady he began to warm up a little more. He told us to get to the hospital right away and get the lady checked in. He wrote out some prescriptions and the name of a doctor to seek out once we got there. I told him that Shama was already without a father and that I didn't want to see her lose her mother too. "That's Haiti," he said matter of factly. We were about to go and he decided to make his first friendly gesture, albeit in Spanish. "Como se llama usted?" he asked me. For those who forgot all they learned in Spanish class, that's, "What is your name?" "Me llamo fre Ed." After a little more, I told him my Spanish was "finito" so he smiled and we talked Creole. His name is Egberto. He asked what I do here. I told him. We shook hands and we were off. I was hoping to get to talk to him more at the hospital tomorrow. Finally we pulled in through the front entrance and into the hospital. A small compound with a few buildings. Mostly very old buildings and a couple of newer ones. The newer ones gave me hope that they might have water and electricity. An old rusted out ambulance now had grass growing in it. Unfortunately we were not directed to the pretty new building. We were sent back to the archive section. Well. It's not real modern looking, but it's not so scary looking....from the outside. Remembering my broken neck some years back, the idea to get a wheelchair for Shama's mother hit me immediately. They were about to bundle her up in that sheet and haul her like a sack of rice into the ward. I told them to wait a minute while I went after a wheelchair. Manno went doctor hunting. I went wheelchair hunting. I was eventually directed to the very last building of the hospital. "Excuse me, we need to borrow a wheelchair please." "The wheelchair is over there." There sat "the" hospital wheelchair with a patient in it. A young man with one of his legs stiffened straight in front of him. We talked with him, in Creole, and asked if we could borrow the chair. We would bring it back right away. We had to lift him out of the chair and onto the floor. The chair itself was a piece of work. It did have four wheels.....trying to go in four directions. Some were hanging on better than others. The seat was ripped from front to back and Styrofoam was bulging out through several smaller tears. After the long fight to push/pull/drag the wheelchair all the way back to the car, it began to seem that carrying the lady might have been much faster and more comfortable for her. Rats played out back as we passed by. Manno was having little luck tracking down a doctor. A nurse guided us to what would be Shama's mother's bed. The nurse had all the animation and liveliness of a zombie. Aside from the rats, she was the first scary thing I saw there. Rats don't bother me from far away, but at night they will nibble on exposed fingers, ears, and toes, while you sleep. This nurse.....was she really a nurse? A bed in the Ti Goave hospital costs little but you have to buy everything that will be used in your treatment. We had to buy syringes, gloves, gauze, serum, bandages, and of course all the medicine. The beds were all in a big room like a dorm. It was growing dark outside. One dim lightbulb lit up on the high ceiling. One bulb for the whole ward. At least there was much more air and space here than in the hut. Finally a doctor appeared. He did a little checking and poking and wrote down a few more things we needed to go buy. We went all over Ti Goave trying to track down the supplies. We returned with an armload of medical goodies and were instructed to give it to the zombie nurse. She sat at her desk in the middle of the ward looking blankly at the supplies laid out before her. Does she know what this stuff is? Can she see it by the light of that dim bulb high up on the ceiling? Eventually the zombie nurse began tearing wrappers off of the syringes and gauze. She dropped the ensuing trash on the floor around her chair. Not good. Is she really a nurse? Eventually she came over with the serum and a needle to start an IV that probably should have been started a couple of hours ago. How in the world was she going to get that needle into a vein in such a poorly lit room? She's used to working in the dark? She's a zombie and doesn't care? We were to learn later that she does not do so well in the dark. It was getting late and we had done all we could for the day. The grandmother was very appreciative. She would stay the night with her daughter. Also the preacher showed up. We both felt very hopeful for Shama's mother (though not based on anything we had seen at the hospital). Shama's mother had a bed by one of the doors so there was plenty of air. I don't think she would have lived the night if she had stayed in that hut. We were ready to call it a day. We arose the next morning with plans to go see Shama's mother before noon. The first good sign was that no one had showed up at our front gate with news that Shama's mother had passed away during the night. As expected, Shama came over to the house early that morning. We snagged a couple of our better behaved kids and took them along to the hospital. Before we even made it to the front of our building, I could see Shama's mother's mother sitting by the bed that we had entrusted Shama's mother to. A good sign. There's nowhere to go but up. She had been emaciated and dehydrated, but with a whole night's worth of serum going into her veins, it was just a matter of replenishing the life that had nearly finished leaking from her mortal coil. "Bon jou, koman la nuit te ye?" A happy greeting to Shama's grandmother and how did she pass the night. "Byen gras a Dieu," fine, thank God. Shama's mother wasn't looking much better or much worse. Her talking still betrayed a large amount of fog in the woman's head, but she seemed to be a little more interested in living. She was fighting a little with the IV, which I noticed was not in the left arm that the zombie nurse had started on last night, but now on the right arm. Turns out that the zombie nurse missed the vein altogether last night. The iv fluid pumped under the skin for most of the night and into the next morning before anyone noticed how swollen Shama's mother's arm was. There had been no doctors throughout the night. This is a ward full of gravely ill people and not one single doctor the entire night. Only a zombie sitting in the middle of her little trash pile at her little table. If something like this happened in America, there would be so many lawsuits and so many heads rolling.... But we're not in America. I was so thankful to have had my kidney stone in Honduras. All said and done, we found Shama's mother much as we had left her. Does anybody work here? Just the same, she had made it through the night. She did want that IV out of her arm. Maybe she had bad memories from when it was in the left arm. The old crank under the bed worked so we cranked her up to sitting position. Eventually another doctor came and did some more poking and BAM, another list of goodies to go buy for treatment. There are several little stores in the dilapidated downtown area of Ti Goave that have little pharmacies. Most of them are no more than a little hole in the wall. We went to several trying to track down the new list of medicine and syringes. Also, there were some tests that would need to be done. We had to go to another building and pay a deposit for an appointment. This is all the normal routine here. We had to pass through a prenatal care section. There was little Margie again. That was just plain depressing. She was sitting in a room full of Margies. All of these young girls with their even younger minds, preparing to be mothers. Most of them will "raise" their children without fathers. Many are just kids that wanted to have a good time. They wandered off from the hut. Now they're back with a baby. There were a few faces that I recognized other than Margie. Kids I hadn't seen for a while.... Don't get all off into that right now, we need to get Shama's mother out of the woods. Fifty Haitian dollars and Shama's mother was set to have some tests done tomorrow. It was afternoon now and there was a Happy House full of kids to get back to, so, feeling we had done all we could for the moment, we headed back to the house. Shama's mother was sleeping now and Shama wanted to go back with us. My head was spinning a bit trying to grasp such a complicated and grossly inefficient hospital system. How could the average person making so little money possibly meet all of these conditions. We had to jump through so many hoops to get all the supplies, tests, etc., that we needed. Now I know why the average Haitian dies at home before going to the hospital. Back at the house, Shama seemed to be handling everything just fine. Maybe too fine even. She played and laughed with the other kids as her mother hung in the balance of life just a 3 minute drive away. It was not really phasing her. Most kids her age would at least be worried about who will take care of them if their mother dies. Shama was playing. Running. Laughing. Having a blast. The kind of thing that I normally like to see.......but.....not now. It's your mother, Shama. Late that afternoon, bad news came. The preacher and another fellow appeared at our front gate. Both of them gazing earthward. This would not be good. I walked out to meet them. My steps felt heavy as my mind began preparing to deal with any one of the scenarios that might be about to unfold. She's probably taken a turn for the worse. No matter, I felt VERY hopeful about her situation. We had not arrived at her hut just in time for nothing. I know we got her on what would have been her dying day. The Lord would get glory for her living and this would be a good witness. Shama was not to be an orphan, even if she didn't know how to appreciate it yet. Amen! Now face to face with the two men, the preacher spoke first. "Li mouri".......She's dead.........................Heavy sigh.......................I had been so hopeful. In fact, I wanted to get it confirmed from Shama's grandmother. Maybe these guys were hoping to collect some funeral funds and then disappear. Maybe the zombie nurse had mistaken her sleeping form for a corpse and pronounced her dead. We just needed to get to the morgue and wake her up. Several things went through my mind. In the end, the preacher really was a preacher. He had not lied. I really had thought that she was going to make it. I felt that the Lord had brought things together. And what about Shama? Where does Shama go now? I was too tired to try to find a silver lining in all of this. The silver lining that I rely on most is that I don't always understand why things happen the way they do. We are not God's equal, that He can explain everything and we will understand. That's not what I believe based on blind fear, that's what I believe is logical. As my brother once said, "Explain electricity to a cat." I gave them some money to help with the burial. Shama's tears were precious few at her mother's funeral. I have come to learn that Shama never called her mother "Mama." She called her mother Denize. That was her real name. She called her grandmother "Mama." She never lived with her mother. Her mother was not the one that has taken care of her through the years. In fact, she didn't even live with her mother. She lived with her grandmother. Nothing has really changed for Shama, except that the lady that lived in the hut across from her, Denize, has passed away. Shama is a sweet little girl. She didn't cry much, because she didn't feel that she lost her real mother. Her grandmother. Now little Fara fears when she passes by there. She fears that the ghost of Denize lingers in the yard under a certain tree whose shade she had enjoyed in life. It is the ghost of Margie that lingers most in my mind. Denize had been a Margie. I hope Margie doesn't become a Denize. So, why write about a story that doesn't have a happy ending? For one thing, this isn't really the end of the story, this is just a slice of the cycle here. Shama will go on to bring a happier chapter I believe. Also, because this is a big part of life here and understanding helps us to pray and to act more effectively. I had not intended to wait so long to finish this, but we have not been having electricity much over the last several days and the place that I go to e-mail newsletters has been closed. They are supposed to be open tomorrow and I am hoping to get this out. As always, thank you to the many folks who pray for and support the work here in Haiti. There are a lot of good things happening here, but sometimes a hard look at hard lives is needed. Take care and Bon Dieu beni nou!!! fre Ed