This morning a young man came at our veranda, asking for help for a lady in his village. He was called by another concerned neighbour that there is a lady in their village who has triplets from over 2 months old. The husband is not supporting her and she is desparate. She has not enough breastmilk and no money to buy milk and the baby's are crying a lot. We decided to go and look into this situation, this afternoon. We drove there, it was in the neighbouring district, when we came close to the home, Simon asked some people for the directions to the home and the stories he heard about the mother were not good. She was getting confused, wandering out and just sitting at the roadside and talking nonsens. We came at the home and were warmly welcomed. The lady was living at her parental home and the father of the triplets has another family elsewhere. He has not even been visiting or bringing soap or smearing oil for the babies, they told us. It was clear that it was all too much for the mother, the oldest baby was doing well, (a boy), but the other two little girls were not doing very good, one of them had a very bad wound at the back of the head, quite big. We talked and told them who we were, they knew about Amecet, so that was good and they were very happy that we had come. After seeing this all, we felt that we could take the two girls and to leave the boy with the mother. The mother was so thankful, she loved her babies, but just couldn't cope with them. At night they all cried, she could not sleep and also the grandmother and the sister of the mother, who were helping her a lot, were very tired.
Here we do all the paper work, I am writing and Simon is translating. Many neighbours came by and gave their opinion about us taking the two little girls. They were all agreeing, because they were concerned with the mother and the children. It was funny, how important the opinion of the community is, they all do their say and it was nice to hear them all speaking good about the mother.
After explaing that the babies would come back to the mother and signing the papers, they all escorted us back to our car. We couldn't drive up to the home, Simon is used to drive on bicycle pads, but it was now getting too narrow. We had walked the last part to the home. So we went back to the car in a long procession, everybody came to see us off!
And here they wave us out. The mother knows where her girls were going and she will be visiting them in Amecet. She is the lady in the orange T-shirt (at the right), I could see hope again in her eyes. She will be very able to care for the little boy, while we care for the girls for a while.
When we came home, we went directly to the doctor at the neighbours. And after that the bottle was ready for them! Here you see Leya and Ann feeding them, they got a bath and a nice bed. Normally we would put the twins or 2/3 of the triplets in one bed, but because of the septic wound, they are in seperate beds for now. I pray the mother (and her family) will have a good sleep tonight!!
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