Have I got FOOL written on my forehead?!

This week, I was 'taken for a ride', or more like I took others for a ride at my expense!
It might look a long story, but is worth a read!

I met this young boy on my way home through the mountains. He has sat in the same place for months usually begging, and to my embarrassment I've never stopped for him before. He has a nasty problem with Elephantitus of both his legs and it's spreading to his hands. I've not stopped before because I've not known what to do. But God really pressed on me last week (and in previous weeks, but it's taken me a while to listen!) when I drove past... “why didn't you stop? I would have spoken to him. Why did you drive on by? Why does EVERYONE just drive on by?” The NGO cars, UN cars, Doctors, British army and ME – Community Children's Physio!
Usually this thought process takes a while and the road is too bad to turn around and go back.

But last week I promised the Lord and myself that this week I would stop.
And stop I did, to meet Umaru – a boy talked to by few, with a mother and father who had died, no other relative wanting to take care of him because of hie oozing legs, he sleeps in the Teachers College compound where the gurads turn a blind eye to him and spent his time begging for food and money. A sorry story.

Of course as soon as I started talking with him a crowd of people gathered all offering their own thoughts on the situation. Then I met AbuBakar (the older boy in the photo), who was kind, honest and seemingly very wise. He took time to talk with Umaru not at him, and in fact knew him vaguely as his aunt often gave him cake. After a long talk, we decided as I didn't know what could be done for him, the best plan was to send him to an NGO hospital on the other side of town.

I phoned the hospital and made arrangements for the next day. I gave AbuBakar the needed money and a bit more for food, and he promised to take the day off school to take him for me. It would be a long journey and a very long day for them both.

What happened next?
No, they did not run away with the money, as I said I just knew AbuBakar was a good one who I could tentatively trust – despite my recent mistrust experiences!
Instead I got a phone call early the next morning to say that the PodaPoda drivers refused to take them in their vehicles because of Umaru's legs.

What could I do? I had so many patients booked in, and it really was a long way to drive for him back and forth through the mountains on bad roads (at least 5 hours driving in total). Not to mention I was still struggling a bit with heat exhaustion from the previous long days work.

How much is too much? How far is too far? Am I just going to drive on by too?
Would would Jesus do?

So I cancelled my plans for the day, begged MercyShips to let me use one of their drivers for the day, and set off for another very long day!!

We got there and had no probs finding AbuBakar as he had shown me where he lived the previous day (so I had somewhere to check in case he ran off with the money so he informed me – like a said, v.honest!), but do you think we could find Umaru? It was like looking for that one lost sheep – we even had two Policemen helping us!!! Eventually we found him, in he jumped and off we bumped along the roads.

Emergency Hospital (an Italian NGO) were so gracious with us, but surprisingly to me, knew of him before, just one of the small but many pieces to the story that was about to unfold before me!! Nothing can be done to reduce the size of his legs, but a medicine available in one of the government hospitals would kill the bacteria and prevent the infection from spreading any more to his hands. Compression bandaging would also help the legs, but they didn't have any big enough. However they did advise of a children's home that might be able to help him.
So while trying to call the home and make arrangements for this boy there, I next discovered that he had an Aunty in town. The home would meet with Umaru the next day, but only with the Aunty. So the next challenge was to find the Aunty.

After a bite to eat we drove into Freetown to one of the dodgiest places, to jump out in the middle of bumper to bumper PodaPodas (I was so pleased not to be driving), to then squeeze our way through 100's of people into the Aunty's house to find we were in the middle of a funeral – another reason why so many people were gathered.

Do you think we found the Aunty?
No.
But we found his MOTHER!!!

Not only that, but she lives right at the junction where I met Umaru in the first place!! The place where no-one claimed to know anything about him, other than he begged and that he had no friends.

After more talking (with crowds adding their own comments again), Aminata the mother tried to explain that he keeps running away from the house and she had not seen him for a few days. I explained where we had been today and what had been advised. She was keen to follow through, and I agreed to call her next week to find out how it had all gone.

So we left Umaru with her and headed out of one lot of chaos, into the PodaPoda standstill, to find the car! As we turned to get in the car, we were surprised to see Umaru had followed us!! So much for the mother taking more responsibility. The mother caught us up and explained that he just wandered again, but also that he was feeling embrassed because everyone at the funeral was looking and commenting about his feet. So we agreed to take him back to the community where he is known.

Driving another hour, we reached there and Umaru had remembered where his house was! He took us there and both AbuBakar and I were speechless that he had withheld all this info before. We both felt like FOOLS! What I hadn't quite realised the day before was his learning difficulty and obvious lack of social integration. This attention, love and care was something he probably rarely gets and he had obviously enjoyed a good day out!!

Talking with the neighbours, Umaru seems quite a wanderer, and difficult to keep at home. I tried to encourage them to keep him occupied with little tasks to keep him from getting bored. However the lure of begging and getting money to spend is often too much, not only for him, but also maybe for his family. As I left, Umaru called out “Aunty Kadi (my SL name), if you bring me some toys I'll stay at the house”! We all laughed and I thought if only you'd told me that yesterday!!!! :0)

I will visit next week and see what has happened. And in the future, when I meet him begging, I now know where to walk him back to, of course talking and laughing on the way.

Yes I felt a fool for spending a long day, and lots of money, but was it a waste or an investment?

Would I stop again for a similar child?
Would Jesus.

As a friend reminded me as I relayed the story to her – being a FOOL for Jesus is nothing to be ashamed of!