A heart-wrenching visit with Jacqueline
on Annemiek Miller (Rwanda), 17/Jan/2008 08:00, 34 days ago
Wednesday January 16, 2008Yesterday my visit to the hospital was heart-wrenching. I went with some food and found Jacqueline by herself curled up on the thin plastic covered mattress with no bedding of any kind.Jacqueline has been in the hospital for 5 weeks. The nurses say she had meningitis. She can hardly sit up. Is being“nursed” by her sister who herself has three kids at least, one of whom is a 11/2 yr old. In Rwandan hospitals, the family takes care of the patient: washes them, washes their clothes and cooks for them. Well, sister has done her share of this but she does it all by herself with 5 kids in tow.It is clear that Jacqueline has been malnourished during her hospitalization. The same goes for her kids. The sister’s family is as disadvantaged as Jacqueline’s. They are Batwas and marginalized in Rwandan society. Over the two and a half years I have known Jacqueline I have found her to be agood and loving mother, a persistent beggar but someone who is unable understand simple instructions which might allow her to help herself and the children.J needs two people to get her out of bed and walk with her to the toilet. When sister is not there which is probably 18 of the 24 hours or more, Jacqueline wets herself. She lies in rags on a plastic mattress that are continually soaked in urine. Sister will change the rags and wash them once a day, but she will be peeing at least 2 or 3 times before sis comes again. That is how I found her yesterday– soaked in urine up to her chest and desperately thirsty and hungry.The ward she lies in is not full. She lies in a corner by the window. Have I mentioned J. is HIV positive as is her Dorkas. Of little Alphonsine, I heard she has not been tested yet. Dorkas’s head is covered in crusts – a parasite one sees on many kids here. I have never seen then this bad on any child however – some of them look pussy and infected. Anyway , yesterday I was with just Jacqueline and I decided to feed her the food I had brought. When finished, I realized when I helped her to lie down again ( I had propped her up against another folded mattress), that she was sopping wet. She was wearing a rag between the legs -, a straight skirt and a pagne (the piece of fabric worn around the middle and tied in front). The thought of her sleeping all night in that mass of wet cloth, reeking of urine, made me rush back home. There I was able to find some old curtains and an old pair of boxer shorts. I went and covered her up again for the night. When I left her I took the soaked stuff with me and spent an hour washing them and boiling them on the stove. Throughout this visit, I was fuming with anger inside. All the more so because as I busied myself with Jacqueline, I had the whole ward staring me down with lots of whispers and laughs.This has been going on for more than 5 weeks and no one at the hospital has intervened. Jacqueline lying there is worse off thanany Rwandan goat, sheep or cow. I vowed to myself to go and talk to the authorities the following day.