Dying Angels.

Hello. I am bit somber tonight. A rough day is an understatement...

So Monday's are "Outreach Days". I think it's an awful title but ho hum, I didn't come up with it. What it means is Nurse Ruth and I go to a brothel and pay them a visit. That came off a bit 'fruity', what I''m trying to say is, we become the travelling Nurses we've always wanted to be!! Today will go down in my heart as a day of great sadness, great ache, and great humbleness. Today I saw things with my own two brown eyes that make the whites of them red....

We took a walk, Nurse Ruth, and our two translators and myself...about two blocks from where I go to work EVERYDAY. We turned a corner and were all of a sudden in an open yard with houses along the outsides, in a circle. We made our way to a porch of a house and walked between the tight buildings on a makeshift walkway/bridge...made of nailed down bits of wood. We found a spot to sit and we were told to wait; That one of the brothel girls would bring "them". Oh my. God help us!

All of a sudden there were probably 50 people. Children. Women. Men. All about us. They crowded us on our little mats and pushed their dirty, sick, wormy, malnourished and crying babies and children into our laps. Ruth became the Adult Care Corner and somehow the children all decided to flock to the Canadian. I was a bit taken back at first but also really excited. Ooooh, I thought, this is it!! I was cleaning foot sores, assessing oozing/swollen ears, hugging smiling baby boys with no clothes on. Looking in mouths to find few teeth without a crack or cavity. I was getting those de-wormer pills out with a vengeance when I turned to look right infront of me and asked, Who's next?..."who's next" will haunt me...

I saw an old women sitting cross-legged with a baby in her arms, wrapped in a dirty brown rag. The baby was bones. My breath was knocked right out of me. I stared. It was a skeleton. It had arms the thickness of my Father's thumb, it had ribs and bones protruding from it's skin as visible as it's nose. I choked out a, "Ruth! Help." But she was too busy. I asked the women how old her baby was. He was 5 months old!!! I would've said 5 weeks old! He was that malnourished. I didn't know what to do. I grabbed my stethoscope to try and focus, but when I listened it made it worse. I assessed it's Fontanel and mucous membranes. Sticky. I felt for it's pulse. Thready. Finally Ruth saw my dying angel and saw my eyes and my quivering chin. She held my hand and together we acted as one nurse. We found out he was only drinking 4 oz. a day. That the women was not his biological mother but an adoptive one. She said she didn't have enough money to feed him more. We looked at eachother and Ruth asked for the both of us, "Can we take him? Would you give him to us? He's dying. He will soon be dead." She refused. She said she got more money with this pile of precious bones when she begged at the RiverFront. He was her leverage.

We cried. Right there. Infront of everyone. We weeped. But we had to move on. We were there for 2.5 hours and probably treated 30 people. We ran to Daughter's under a black sky. It poured just as we got in the doors.
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I've always been a bit visual with my emotions. Like I feel them so intensely that I begin to see them as well. Colors. Shapes. Textures. Depths. Weights.
Today in Church E. and I sat at the back. Us Notty girls; came in late with our iced coffee's in hand! We sang a song about the Glory of the Lord rising up all around. The powerpoint had a rainbow as the background. As I stood and sang my heart out I suddenly realized I was seeing something else. The room was completely quiet. But I wasn't in the room. I was standing on the street. Down by the market. And instantly i pictured this swift, rolling, ribbon-like cloud. It was weaving in and out, up and down, between and around. All along the streets of P.P. In the hustle. The noises. The dirt. The poverty. I gasped, "It's here!"

Hope? I saw hope. it was slow but quick all at the same time. Deep purple with white and blue. The streets seemed to have the mute button on. Like a wind. It wrapped around the mottos. it stretched under the tables along the sidewalks. It breathed past the beggars and enveloped the street girls. It was quick as the people kept moving. I lost my breath for a second. I blinked and i was back in church. It was the glory of the Lord all around.

I stared at the rainbow on the powerpoint then looked around. I saw the multi-colored heads all around me. Different heights. shapes. colors. textures. weights. depths. At first I saw a sea of differences. Then I saw the colored hands raised and I realized that WE are the rainbow! We are the colors of the Rainbow. We are what God sees. This is what God sees. His children. His creation.

So I'm no the only one with a colorful imagination I thought to myself.
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Today as I sat searching for the last children's vitamins we had in the bag, I felt that ribbon of wind. I saw those bright colors. I was there. It was there. We weren't alone. I gave them to Him. I was humbled. I could do nothing.

With a new found thankfulness for a full belly, a healthy grin, a strong laugh and a witnessing spirit,

Kimber...