Medical Care Gift (Digital download)

How your gift has helped Laughter Africa children in the past:

Have you ever said goodbye to someone and know that it will be the last time that you will probably see them alive? How can you find the words to sum up everything you want to say?

That happened to me recently. I had to say goodbye to one of our old kids M. He is only 15 years old and I have known him for over 4 years. M came to the ICC on a Sunday in the middle of November 2023. I hadn’t seen him for years. He looked absolutely dreadful. He had been stabbed in the back three times during the night after an altercation with a gangster who tried to rob him while he was sleeping. The wounds were pretty deep. Our nurse Isata took him immediately to the hospital for treatment where he received stitches. He needed three days treatment so he stayed at the ICC. He couldn’t even last one night at the centre before needing to go back to the streets and take kush.

He was so thin that I suspected straight away that he might have HIV or hepatitis so we did a test. He has both. I suspect that he also has TB as he was coughing a lot in the night. He left before he could get tested though.

About 4 am in the morning, M woke up screaming, saying that someone was trying to kill him. He was having delusions – I think as a result of repeated drug taking. He kept saying that he wanted to return his old blood soaked clothes to the secret society – otherwise they would kill him. He wasn’t making much sense. We were trying to calm him down but with no success. He was getting more and more agitated. He was just so desperate for kush. I told him that he was sick and that he would die without treatment but it was to no avail- he still wanted to leave. Meanwhile one of the security guards’ phones had gone missing. We found it hidden on M. Although we still begged him to stay, his mind was made up.

I said a final goodbye because I don’t think he will come back. I told him that he was my pikin and that Laughter Africa will always be there for him. I told him that he is always come back no matter what. He left happily but without a true understanding about what he is about to face. His final words were that “God will look after me.” He promised me that he would come back that day but I knew that he wouldn’t. He hasn’t been back since. He will probably be dead by Christmas. And all this happened before 6am.

In the last week alone I have seen 3 street kids whose legs look like they have been hacked at with machetes. They all had massive chunks of their legs missing. There is no way to describe it apart from its like half their legs have been eaten by a piranha. This is because of the latest side effects of Kush. The kush is making their legs swollen which makes them more susceptible to any injuries. So any slight injury will make their legs literally crumble away. Sorry for the graphic imagery but there is no nice way to describe it. It is truly a grotesque sight and the children are in horrendous pain. All three of the street children were beaten with iron rods for stealing. There is no consequence for the people who attack the street kids. They are “thieves” so they “deserve” it. We have no choice but to treat them or they will die.

These are just a snapshot of some of the different medical cases that we have seen since September 2023. Other serious cases include:

- One girl A needs an operation as she has a huge fibroid.

- One girl has suspected ovarian cancer.

- 5 cases of HIV. Its never easy to tell someone that they have tested positive.

- 5 hepatitis cases.

- a lot of pregnant girls or young mums with their babies constantly need treatment.

- One girl was crushed by a wall which had collapsed in the rain.

- One boy I had hurt his toes after he was in a motorbike crash.

- One case of TB. When F arrived to collect his school supply in September 2023, he could hardly breathe, he was coughing all the time and he was just skin and bone. He could hardly walk. He was soon diagnosed with TB. He stayed with us in the ICC during the first week of treatment but he really struggled. One night, he woke up at 3am, his heart was racing and he couldn’t see. We stayed up with him for 2 hours, just singing to him and calming him down. I think that it was a panic attack. Thankfully he is undergoing treatment and is already getting much better.

One young person we provided medical treatment for was Mohamed. We first met Mohamed in our Susan’s Bay mobile project in 2017, wearing his Spongebob Squarepants T-shirt. He never took it off. Eventually we took him home and paid school for him but about three years ago, he returned to the streets.

On 24th March 2022, he was attacked in the eye by a fellow street child who beat him repeatedly in the eye with a rock. Rather than coming to us straight away, he decided to visit a ‘nurse’ in Lumley who butchered his eye more by giving him the wrong treatment. She just sewed his eye together.

Eventually, we found out about what had happened and took him to two different eye hospitals. Both hospitals recommended that they removed his eye straight away or he would lose the sight in his other eye too.

Before the operation, Mohamed stayed a few nights at the Interim Care Centre. On the morning of his operation, Mohamed knocked on my door at 4am. Blood was dripping from his eye and he was in so much pain. It was horrible not to be able to do anything to stop his pain. I felt so useless but there was literally nothing I could do. All I could do was just sit with him.

On the 31st March the doctors removed his eye. As he is only 17, he still needed the consent of his mother, Fatmata. When we brought her to the hospital, she begged the doctor, “please take my eye instead and give it to him.”

Although Mohamed, his mother and the hospital all wanted the eye removed, the final choice was still with me. To make a choice whether someone loses an eye or not. And let me tell you its not an easy decision to make. I never cry in Salone. To survive in Sierra Leone, you have to be tough and I suppose I have put a barrier up to protect myself emotionally. That day I couldn’t stop crying. I felt a mixture of guilt and pity. Mohamed assured me a few weeks later that it was the right choice to make and that he doesn’t hate or resent me, which was my biggest fear. In June 2022 we paid for Mohamed to have another operation where he was given a prosthetic eye.

I am amazed by his courage, bravery and resilience. He has just brushed himself up and got on with life. He has no time for self pity, “I still have one eye and I can still live a normal life. Yes it was a shock at first but now I am just determined to live life to the full. To make my life count.” Even more remarkably, Mohamed has forgiven the boy, Hassan, who destroyed his eye. “One thing I have learned is that life is to short to hold grudges. What use is anger? What will that achieve? I just want to move forward and not look back anymore. To do that I need to forgive Hassan and let go of all that anger and resentment. What has happened has happened.”

Sadly although Mohamed stayed home for a while, he was back on the streets by December 2022. In September 2023, he was beaten by a group of gangsters with a cable. They beat him in the eye which became infected so we had to get him another prosthetic eye.

I want to thank our nurse Isata who is our unsung hero. Any time, any day, she is always on call and ready to jump into action. Thank you for all you do.