Babiano

A prayer request for you.
About two weeks ago, a kid came to our fence, calling for us and saying he wanted water. When we went out to see him, he was sitting on a rock, his head in his hands, gushing blood. He had been beaten with a stick by drunk men in the neighboring village and his head was a complete mess. There was so much blood. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much. Kim and I tried to stop the bleeding, took him the mile or so down to the clinic. Steve met us there and we put him on a drip—he’d lost a lot of blood—and tried to control things while we searched for the volunteer nurse guy. I ended up helping put stitches in this guys head—with utensils I’m not certain were sterile and in a bed we’d moved by the window for light, since there is no electricity. At first, the nurse said he didn’t have local anesthetic, so we tried to go in without it, at which the boy nearly flew off the table in pain and was screaming. Michael (the nurse) soon decided maybe he did have anesthetic after all. It took him forever to get everything ready. He seemed so unsure of what he was doing. At times, Steve was softly suggesting, “Do you really want to do that exactly?” Steve’s no doctor. I’m no nurse. But there we were. I definitely was forced to reckon with the reality of the situation here, the reality of AIDS, the reality of poor medical care, the reality of… these people’s lives and the effect balu (beer) has on their society. It’s safe to say I was furious. But I should say: They do good work with what they have; the guy is a volunteer with limited resources and limited education, but Iris is impressed by what he can do. So, yeah, don’t want to slander the guy.
A few days ago, we got word that the kid (a teen) was still having troubles and they weren’t controlling the bleeding very well. They thought he was going to die. His situation keeps changing, so please pray for him. His family is one that we’re close with in Husa and would love to see come to the Lord.