A mother's love

On Wednesday I accompanied a mother and son (along with a couple other Imara staff) to the hospital. This mother and her three year old son belong to the Maasai tribe, one of the largest and most fierce tribes in East Africa. To this day they still adhere to ancient practices and customs and take great pride in who they are as a people group. One of the customs of this nomadic people group is to literally discard children who are born with a handicap or defect. This mother, for some reason unknown to me yet, chose not to follow the custom (and probably the direction of her local elders) and kept her baby that was born with an enlarged head (hydrocephalus). Over the past three years the child's head has continued to slowly grow larger and at the same time his mother has continued to love and protect him.

He is small for his age and cannot walk but he can stand and hold his head up and is pretty good at "cruising" (moving on his feet as he holds onto something or someone). He always seems to be miliseconds from being off balance because of his large head but I never saw him fall once. Something he loves to do is to dance (sway forward and back like the Maasai traditional dance) as his mother sings. The love and joy was so evident on his face and his mother's that I was almost moved to tears as I watched this happen several times throughout the day.

A few months ago a medical team from the US came to the village near to where they live in northern Tanzania. Although "near" is a relative term, I usually think of distance in terms of how long will it take to drive from point A to point B but to travel the same distance on foot is a different story. So this mother walked for hours to bring her child to where she heard the doctors would be. The Americans decided they would definitely help the child but he would need to be seen at the hospital. So this past week everything was arranged for him to be taken to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, one of the biggest hospitals in the country. By next week a decision will be made by the doctors at KCMC if surgery is even appropriate for this child and if it can be done there or in Dar Es Salam. Please pray for this child, his mother, and for the doctors. Obviously I want to see him have the opportunity to grow up as a healthy and fully functioning child but also a successful surgery will be such a testimony to the rest of his Maasai community. Pray that God would be given glory whatever the outcome.