Mukelo

On our first trip to Swaziland, Amy and I, along with the rest of our church team, some of the D-team, and some of the staff, visited RFM Hospital.  We all came out of the Hospital with the vow that we would never return to that awful place.  We had no idea that we were giving God a good laugh by telling him what we would not do.  Once we moved here full time, Amy found herself visiting the hospital on a regular basis.  Each time she or Allison visited the children’s ward, there would be another child that had been abandoned by its mother.  Because there is no other alternative, these abandoned children end up at the hospital, a very difficult place to be on a day to day basis. These abandoned kids stay there until somewhere more suitable is found for them.  Sometimes it takes a long time.  Some of these kids are sick, some are not.  In Swaziland, it is the responsibility of the sick person’s family to be there to take care of them, to feed them, change them, or whatever the need is.  If you are abandoned, there is no one to do this.  Amy has done this for some of these kids.  We have bought diapers, blankets, clothes, food, and toys and taken them to these kids.  Amy has held, bathed, changed, fed, and loved on these kids when no one else was there to show them the love of a mother and the love of Jesus.  She has been the hands and feet of Jesus for some of these kids during their last days.

In November, on a visit to the hospital, Amy and Allison found another child that had been abandoned by her mother because she could no longer care for the child’s special needs.  The child appeared to have Cerebral Palsy.  Her entire body was arched into the shape of a backwards C.  Her head almost touched her bottom, her muscles were rigid, and she laid in that position in a baby bed, all day every day, staring at a cream colored wall!  Amy asked on a regular basis if we could bring her to our house until they found some place more suitable for her.  The nurses and Doctors were agreeable but the social worker was still dragging her feet.  They would take diapers or a blanket to the hospital for her only to find the next day that someone had stolen them.  There was no one to take care of her other than the already stretched-too-thin nurses.  She was 17 months when she arrived at the hospital but her physical appearance was more like that of a three month old.  Around Christmas, we received a call from the social worker asking if we and the Clyburns would bring home this child as well as a set of abandoned twin infants.  We were away from home meeting with some friends when we got the call and she told them she would have to talk with me.  The social worker said she would call the next day.  We were wondering what had made the sudden change with the social worker.  When we never heard from the social worker the next day, the whole process started over.  When Amy finally reached the social worker, she was told that the twins had been placed with family and that the Doctors wanted to do some more things with the baby girl who we now knew as Mukelo.  Amy had gone through her charts and found out her name.

One day, while reading the news paper, I came across a headline reading:  Disabled baby girl dumped by Mother.  Under the picture it read:  DUMPED:  Mukelo Dos Santos.  The article was Mukelo’s story and some excerpts from the note the mother left.  It referred to her not as Mukelo but as the “dumped child”.  Police were looking for the mother but never have found her.  I couldn’t get over the fact that Mukelo was referred to throughout the article as “dumped” and not abandoned.  Since she has physical disabilities, they chose the word “dumped” because here a disabled child is more like trash.  I continue to be grateful to the mother who had tried to get help with her disabled child and in the end chose to leave her with a note trying to get her help instead of killing her.  You see, here in Swaziland it is not uncommon for a mother to kill a child she cannot care for or for a mother to abandon a child or leave it with the father if she wants to take a new man that doesn’t want to care for a child that is not his.  We have all been asked several times since we moved here if we would take a child from a desperate or young mother.  These women think their child will have a better life if it is raised by a white person.

Amy has taken several visiting teams to the hospital.  It had gotten to the point though, that she had a hard time visiting the hospital because she was overwhelmed by seeing Mukelo lying there staring at the wall.  She wanted so desperately to be able to help this child.  One team that visited even had physical therapists that went to the hospital and gave Mukelo a workout and taught Amy  and Allison some things to do for her.  Finally, a different social worker from the hospital called to ask if we were willing to take Mukelo home.  We were very skeptical that anything would come of it.  Amy went to the appointment and they told her to come to the hospital on Friday March 30 and pick her up.  Amy and Allison went, and after some more meetings, and more drama, came home with Mukelo.  

After four months of staring at a wall in the hospital, Mukelo moved in with us.   She has been here now for three and a half months and is making great progress.  She was very malnourished and dehydrated when we first got her, probably because it was so difficult to feed her with her body so contorted.  She has learned to drink from a bottle, and with lots of physical therapy is now able to sit in a position that makes it much easier for her to eat baby food.  We have her on a steady diet of Pediasure and fortified baby cereals so she is gaining weight and finally looking more plump and healthy.  The doctors that have examined her here in Swaziland all agree that she has spastic quadraplegic Cerebral Palsy as well as cortical blindness.  We don’t know how much she will be able to progress, but with lots of love, prayers, food and physical therapy we are seeing steady improvements.

We don’t know what the future holds for Mukelo.  Our initial desire was to get her out of the hospital and into a nurturing, healthy situation.  We had hoped to be able to find permanent placement for her with one of the children’s homes or orphanages in Swaziland.  We have discovered, though, that there is no one who is able (or willing) to accept a child with disabilities.  We continue to pray for God’s will for this sweet girl, but the longer we have her in our family, the harder it is going to be to trust her to someone else’s care.  International adoption is not currently open in Swaziland, and we can’t even take her across the border when we visit South Africa, so a long term solution is even more complicated.  We are hoping to come back to the States for several months over the holidays, but we have to find a way to make sure Mukelo is safe and cared for before we book our flights.

Would you please pray for us and for Mukelo?  We are trusting that God has a plan for this sweet child of His and are praying that He will show us what He wants us to do for her.

We love and appreciate all of you and covet your prayers so very much!