Marie Jeanne, the answer to our prayers
on Annemiek Miller (Rwanda), 27/Jan/2008 14:11, 34 days ago
January 24Claudine ( my house girl), bless her soul, helped me find a caregiver whom I pay and who comes 12 hours a day. Marie Jeanne is a courageous and compassionate woman and she started the work last Friday. Like Jacqueline, she has AIDS. She is on ARV’s and in good health. She washes the family, feeds them (food prepared at my house), gives them the various medications and washes the clothes. J is now able to sit up with difficulty, but she is unable to stand or walk by herself and is incontinent.Making porridge every morning, a nutritious meal at noon and soup and bread at night. Found a liter of cow’s milk a day also. Fortuitously, while at home in Canada, 5 generous people gave me cheques for unforeseen matters. Well, this is such a matter so the care and food is paid for. It does take a lot of my time however and makes me very angry inside sometimes!Unfortunately both Claudine and Marie Jeanne (caregiver) have become the target of insults and name calling coming from the sister as they move through town. Claudine had to hide in a store yesterday! The sister claims she is owed a salary for all the work she did and that she was chased from the hospital. I will try to appease her in the next few days and offer her some gifts of food. I have been helped by Pastor Samuel in all this and he spoke to Claudine yesterday. The harassment so discouraged her, she did not want to come to work for me and help prepare the food. I guess this is what you get when you barge in and try to change people’s way of doing things. I just saw it as a matter of life and death that’s all.The two children are doing better. They drink the milk and eat with relish. Yesterday we bought some new used clothes (the kind you all throw in those boxes on a regular basis).It was so nice to see them in clothing that has a colour and is clean. Dorucas has fleas and has passed them on to me. They hop on to me the minute I am in their vicinity. It happens in public transport too. So I am covered in bites and have to keep laundering my clothes and the bedding and resist scratching. Just to close this off, I have not finished speaking to the hospital people. I hope to speak with the head of social welfare to find out exactly what they do. It seems to me this should have been their work. Keep you posted.