Two sad stories....

Yesterday afternoon Epietu was brought in by his auntie. I wrote several times about this little boy who is now 6 months old. He was our little Christmas boy! He was always very tense and restless, not easy to feed, a child who has his marks of life already on him, and that were not happy marks!! We found his grandmother willing to take him and we trained her to feed him. In the blog of May 25 I wrote about her, coming to take Epietu home. She loves him and he was very happy to be with her. After two weeks she came back and we helped her with some nutritional supplements and we weighed him and he gained!!! We were very happy, until yesterday......

The auntie told us that he had been sick and was put on Quinine, he was still vomiting and had diarrhea. It was so sad to see him again like this. He lost almost one kg. and  was crying and miserable. He was taken directly to the clinic next door and tested for malaria and seen by the doctor. No malaria, but seriously dehydrated and malnourished. Was put on drip and Janneke stayed with him during the night. She told me later that he had really cried so bad, it had been very hard to keep him quiet and comfortable.

 Dominique took over in the morning and she has been standing with him in his arms, holding him like you see on the picture, for hours. By then he was on IV drip, on oxygen and on NG tube. In the afternoon he looked much better, not dehydrated anymore, Janneke and Dominique took him to the hospital to get a paediatrician to see him. test were done, and only severe malnutrition came out. So we are going to work seriously at that.

In the meantime, I worked with the other sad story.... The police brought a 10 year old girl to Amecet in the morning. She was found and brought to the police. She is from Tororo, a place around 3 hours drive East, from Soroti. She was living there with her parents, then her auntie took her from there to Amuria, a District N-W from Soroti. She went there to school, but she also had to clean, cook and do the laundry. Last week something went wrong and the auntie got angry, and beat her with a big stick on her arm, she had also splashes from hot water on her. yesterday morning the girl, Miriam, decided to leave and started to walk, direction home. She walked the whole day and was taken by the evening to the police, by concerned people. So the next day she ended up in Amecet. I took her to the clinic, because she couldn't use her arm and it was swollen. We had to go for an X-ray in town, because the electricity was off. Her arm was broken and again some hours later, she got a cast around her right arm. Tomorrow we will decorate it!! Miriam is a sweet girl, she can smile already. The police will decide what to do next, but she will probably go back to her parents in Tororo.