oh baby, baby

 This is my Aylan, so to speak (as in Alan Kurdi, from the refugee crisis). He is the child I will always remember for representing a huge, dramatic crisis.  I don’t even know his name, but I can still see myself sitting next to his lifeless body and wanting to just hold him and cry for a very long time.  The picture in my mind is that of his body wrapped in a white PPE apron from the clinic. Since ebola, clinic workers are not supposed to touch corpses, so we wrapped him and only his beautiful face was visible. I took this photo the day before, when he was just a boy playing in the clinic’s waiting room. He was only there to accompany a sick family member. He was never examined and nobody worried about him. His mother was smiling about having his picture taken. A perfect little boy.

The next morning he did seem sick and a neighbor told his mom to take him to the clinic. She had spent the previous day there, so that day she really felt she should work the land in order to have food for her family that evening. She couldn’t afford another day at the clinic. In the evening her boy-friend rushed them to us on his motorbike, with the boy suffering fever seizures. Our head-nurse and I stood over his body, knowing we were looking in vain for signs of life and trying to think up the least painful way to tell his mother. When she heard, she broke down in tears of desperate regret and sorrow. She spent some time running, trying to process the pain that swept over her. I sat next to his wrapped little body with my hand on his chest. I soaked in some of Africa's pain for a while. I watched the nurse pack away some things as tears were running from her eyes. She has not been able to get used to the hopelessness she often gets to see. Thank God for that.

Malaria. If a child continues playing and doesn’t fret too much while having high fevers at night, you may not even notice that malaria is busy taking your kid. Especially if there are bigger, louder children around, taking all the attention. We noticed from feeling this boy’s enlarged spleen after he died, that he must have had quite a few feverish nights. He taught me to, in future, manually examine every child’s belly to look for this sign. Give the anti-malaria tablets in time, and they will live. Have them sleep under a mosquito net and malaria can be prevented.

It’s a wild world, where children die from preventable diseases without anyone noticing. What to tell a mother in a place like that? “You should’ve come sooner...”? She’s learnt that the hard way too.

Caustic soda is another killer in Liberia. People use it to make soap, but sometimes they forget to store it away from children. Well, it’s not like the average Liberian household has plenty of cupboards with locks on them. Baby Susan drank from a cup that had been used for caustic soda. Her mother came running to the clinic with her and thankfully she was not too late. I’m guessing Susan hadn’t drunk too much of the stuff. Or maybe it’s because we prayed with all our might. All we could do for the rest was make her drink plenty of milk and give her some anti-inflammatory tablets. Had she needed surgery, there would’ve been little hope for her. She made it and her mother followed our advice to come back to the clinic for a check-up the next day. It was only then that I realized I had assisted Susan’s birth, during my previous visit to Rivercess. Encouraging to see some of these little ones make it!

You can help, you know? There’s opportunities to give: www.benyoh.nl
Or check out Drive Against Malaria and find out how preventable malaria is. Exciting stuff is going on with the Roll Back Malaria partnership, speaking out for a malaria-free world.

Apparently, little Anna (preemie of 2014. see Liberia 2014) has also been sighted at the clinic. She left us being way too small to be ‘independent’ and sent into the wild, but showed up about a year later. I'm sorry I wasn't there to meet her again, but one of our co-workers remembered her as "my little baby" and was able to tell me that she made it through that first risky year of her life. Her mother may be one of the most eager learners I’ve worked with in Liberia. She has not been to school, but makes sure her kids will go and I trust her to make a contribution to a stronger next generation.

guest blog

Renske asked me to write a guest blog post for The Better World. What an honor - I love that ever positive website! Here it is in English (of in het Nederlands). I encourage you to take some time to read her inspirational posts.

reflective exercise: bubbles!

Bubbles in different settings this year: new bubbles, burst bubbles, fun bubbles, joyful bubbles at a wedding, bubbles for kids in Liberia, physical bubbles, metaphorical bubbles. Bubble-making requires 100% focus. The right amount of controlled exhaling and no rushing! Is that why we make them at weddings? Taking a deep breath to celebrate beauty?

I watched a 3-year-old try and fail, because all he was doing was blow loudly with all his might. Instead of bubbles, he got drops of soap flying all over the place. When I showed him how to do it, his face lit up at the sight of bubbles in the air.

Long ago a description of bubbles appeared on this blog (soccer and soap, 2006):

Perfectly round, because they take up the most convenient shape (ever seen a soap bubble turn out triangular or star-shaped?), thin and fragile, but floating, because they are that light.We watched two of them interfere with each other and bounce off harmoniously, without breaking. “People should be like soap bubbles,” GJ concluded. “When they meet they don’t need to hurt each other.”

That's how I tried to go to Liberia. To meet people and bump into their lives for a moment, just to bring some color and joy. As I mentioned earlier, to simply ask them how they are doing.

I have been back now for two weeks and have had many thoughts and feelings about this place in Rivercess. I spent some time doing volunteer work at the Liberian Inland Mission Clinic (LIMC) as a midwife; giving out medicine, attending to wounds, sorting through some administrative work, screening patients, giving basic health education and antenatal care. By doing that for a short while, the local nurse and midwife are freed up for some other activities. Otherwise they are basically on call 24/7.

It's a tiny contribution to a place of great need, but one incident keeps reminding me of the effects of visiting and showing a little care to people who aren't used to being seen very much.
On my previous trip to Liberia in 2014, I held a tiny dying baby who was brought to the clinic days too late. I saw the mother's grief as I broke her final bubble of hope.
We talked a few times after that and prayed for the healing of her body and heart. She brought a friend with a sick child to the clinic. She wasn't angry with me for not being able to save her baby.

This time, I didn't see her, but I asked her brother how she's doing. I was so happy to hear she now has a healthy little boy. It took a moment for her brother to understand that I was asking about her. Finally, his face broke into a smile as he said: "You remember my sister?"

His reaction shocked me a bit. I have seen many patients come and go, but some have to leave footprints in your heart. Her baby died in my arms; I saw her rip her clothes and cry terribly as she realized it was too late for help. How could I not remember her?!

I guess death is too much a part of life in some places. Encounters like this one, remind me of that. Rereading the discussion underneath my old post on bubbles, I stumbled upon this comment by my friend Luke:

We're meant to be able to do damage. In fact, I'd argue that the more you care about a person, the more you enable that person to hurt you. It's called love, eh? The *ouch* in relationships are where a lot of depth comes from. Needing to ask forgiveness, going through restoration, understanding a person's internal workings and why they hurt and how you can care better for them.

Liberia hasn't bounced off on me like a soap bubble, I guess. The more you really meet and see people, especially those who are hurting, the more you end up a little heart-broken yourself.
And I think that's a worthwhile experience.

Fairlingo's wordplay

Have you heard? Fairlingo is in beta! They are shrinking the world with out-of-the box, creative, innovative, developments. Since I know some of my readers are better travelers than myself and have multiple language skills, let's do some advertising for once. Fairlingo is owned by Vertaalbureau Perfect, a Dutch translation agency that encourages language lovers to have a go at translating for money. If you're anything like me and playing with words makes you smile, why not check out fairlingo.com?!

Technology can make us more stressed and creates new opportunities for criminals and terrorists, but hey, it definitely allows us to dream bigger dreams. New concepts like Fairlingo could even allow you to make a living in Terlingua, a mining district in Texas, where the only community life is in a ghost town. This is where Jim Keaveny and Anna Oakley have their social life. They built their home in the middle of the dessert, using every means to be self-sustaining. The off-the-grid life: no water, electricity or other so called 'modern-day necessities', except...the World Wide Web!

Anna works as a webpage designer, so the internet is one luxury she does need. No problem, because everyone in Texas has the right to have access to a phone line. However remote their home may be, they can still be up-to-date with what's happening in the world,

Fairlingo and Terlingua; they could be a match! Dream on that for a bit...

Source: reisgraag.nl
Off-the-grid life in Terlingua with Flora Dessing*

I love my physical job and the team of people I work with, but I like the idea of being able to go anywhere in the world and work from 'the middle of nowhere'. So yes, Fairlingo makes me dream a little bit. For now, I'm doing it all wrong. When I go off-the-grid, I don't even bring a computer. I don't even bring a smartphone, to be completely honest with you. I suppose my life is in beta, but let there be room for development.

So far my assignments for Fairlingo as a translator (Dutch to English) have been a lot of fun. Language is culture and translation is not just knowing what one word means in another language. No, you want to think of how a native speaker of the other language would actually say it. How will the message come across? My younger brother taught me: "How did I learn to speak German? Well, I just try to be a German."

(Beware: the next moment he can be an orange-loving Dutch guy, who gets offended if you mistake him for a German!)

So translation is getting into culture (forever interesting!) and playing with words (fun!). The cool thing with Fairlingo is that it works so fast, using the internet. I'll pick up an assignment and they tell me I have 24 hours to get the translation done. As soon as I've finished translating, a revisor picks up the assignment and in no time the whole project is finished. I get valuable feedback, which gives me the opportunity to improve my language skills and the customer gets quality for money. 

The only down-side is the vast number of competing translators, who are so much more 'on-the-grid' than I am. But then again, I'm in beta..! :-)



*For the Dutch readers, here's where I got the other half of my inspiration: Floortje Naar Het Einde Van De Wereld

back to Liberia

"Is he blind?" said one lady, viewing a photo of my first trip to Rivercess, Liberia. There were several photos of blind people in the booklet, so why was she pointing at the eyes of a friend who had his full eyesight? 

Blindness is out of hand in West Africa for several reasons. For instance, people suffering from cataract in Europe undergo fast and simple surgery, but this is unavailable to most people who have the same problem in Africa. Then there's all the bugs causing Filarial diseases, like River Blindness. A short cure with anti-worm tablets before the eyes are damaged can completely prevent this type of blindness. Three small tablets are needed, but being nowhere near those tablets, people go blind. And now there is the Ebola aftermath, with about a quarter of the survivor's suffering with eye problems, some of which have gone completely blind as well.

Taking care of resources: even the gloves are washed and re-used.

Often a lack of resources is the cause of blindness, which again diminishes the sufferers resources as being blind doesn't help in finding and keeping a job. Add to that the stigma of disease, which may well lead to becoming a social outcast, so suffering is multiplied and the sufferer overlooked many times over.

Back to the portrait at the beginning of this blogpost. Glancing over at the eyes in the picture, I noticed what this lady saw. A couple of serious-looking eyes, and there seemed to be a film over them. Eyes that have not gone blind, but that have seen too much. Running from war, watching helplessly as friends and family suffer all sorts of brokenness, seeing disease that should've been treated and fighting a helplessness that creeps into so many homes and hearts.

People from wealthier countries sometimes seem to think that suffering is a way of life in developing countries, as if it belongs there. People are used to it and they are still happy and smiley about it and they know how to dance well, so they'll be fine.

They are not fine. Africa has many courageous survivors, but it is not OK for us to be blind to their pain. There is no satisfying end to this post and I have no simple solutions. I guess I will go back and ask: "How are you?"
A shaky starting position, but we'll see from there.

scooch over?

Many voices these days are saying: "There's so much going on in the world today, so many disasters, wars, crisis, persecution!"
My natural tendency is to try to put things in perspective and say that the world has always known crisis - it wasn't that pleasant in the Middle Ages or in Roman times, when Christians were thrown to the lions and there were public crucifixions.

As from today, I'd like to stop doing that, because it's time everyone noticed that the world is burning! Just as it's high time to scooch over to make room for those who are suffering.

A short word-study on the slang "to scooch"

I learnt from a blogster called Janine Huldie that "scooch" may be short for the Italian word "Scocciatore" which means "a pain in the neck". It seems Europe has regarded the stream of refugees as "Scocciatore" and tried to ignore the problems. Can we keep that up with all the media bringing us news of crisis every day? Or will we shift focus to the other meaning of the word? Will you make room in the seat next to yours to welcome a refugee?

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, 

for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. (Heb. 13:2, NIV)

Watching gladiators

In Roman times the rich would go to the theater to watch gladiators kill each other. Horrible and sadistic entertainment! But the passive masses watching the suffering on the news are perhaps larger today. Will we let what we see really move us? The photo of a 3-year-old's body on a Turkish beach brings a shock-wave to social media. It reminded me of my little nephew and as I read comments on social media I'm guessing most of you know a tiny boy like that personally. And so the gladiators we watch from a great distance, become real humans we know and love from up close.

Can you hold that emotion long enough to get about doing something and to start giving? And if you don't know where to start yet, can you at least be gentle to every stranger you come across?

Snow White and the importance of ebony

Conversation in TV series Falco between the two leading inspectors:

Falco quotes from Little Red Riding Hood: “ ...did your mother never read those fairy tales to you?”
Chevalier shakes his head: “No, too violent...with the wolf and all.”
- “What about Snow White?”
- “Oh no, too much discrimination.”
*Falco frowns, looks at him questioningly.*
- “Yeah, what with all the little people?”
- “Gee, I don’t know what to say....”

As a child, I did get to hear those stories and I vaguely remember looking over at that big story book and finding it a little creepy to have all those mean witches on my bookshelf.  The words fascinated me though. One day I was given a black doll and my parents asked me what her name would be. My response was immediate: “Snow White.”

For some time the grown-ups in the house looked at each other puzzled, as I continued to play house with this new family member. Finally, someone dared to ask for the logic that was going on inside my little head. To me (the kid) it seemed self-explanatory, but of course I would oblige to clarify: “Her hair is black as ebony.”

Generations of childhood nostalgia from my family

Intermezzo for the rare few who have forgotten the classic Grimm tale of Snow White:

A young woman wished for a child with “lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow”.  She was granted her wish. Her perfectly beautiful baby was born the next year, but of course life isn’t always perfect and after the sun comes the rain (and sometimes a tornado-storm). The good and happy mother tragically died after naming her. To make their misery complete, Snow White’s dad decided to remarry, but this time he married a wicked woman.

So the girl had to run away to the seven dwarfs in the forest, where she had the time of her life before her step-mother tried to kill her with an apple. Luckily a prince came along and he was so smitten with her that he carried her off while she was in a coma. On that journey he tripped, miraculously dislodging the piece of apple stuck in Snow White’s throat. This woke her up and she lived happily ever after her first kiss with the prince. 

Being the girl I was (am) with a strong liking of new words that nobody uses, the important detail I got out of this entire story was “black as ebony”. Obviously, with my doll having lots of black hair on her head I didn’t have to think twice to name her!

Skin color doesn’t matter to a small child. No one is born a racist. Nelson Mandela said it well:

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

The skin color that does perhaps matter, is that of the dolls you let your kids play with. I found out that several generations in my family have played with black dolls during their formative years. There seems to be a “black is beautiful” attitude amongst us to this very day. Might there be a connection?

luxurious poverty

When asked to say something about the poverty talked of in Berlin, an Indian resident of Berlin said:
"In India we are happy with 5 hours of electricity. In Berlin there is electricity all the time so people feel nothing about it. Talk about poverty."

We feel "nothing" about the luxury we have. In some cases, we don't even dare to think about how dangerous our luxury is. How is luxury increasing loneliness in the West?

In Liberia, I saw someone watch a video about Holland with fascination. The fascination was his, embarrassment was my share in the experience. He said: "I would like to live there except for one thing; people don't see each other. How can someone be dead in his home for days without anyone noticing? This seems very lonely."

And now robotics have become so advanced that we can let robots visit our elderly instead of meeting up with them personally.

2doc: Ik ben Alice

This week Dutch public television broadcast showed the documentary Ik ben Alice ("I am Alice"), questioning whether a robot named Alice could build a relationship with an old lady and help her feel less lonely. Alice proves that she can help in some ways, but she also underlines the pathetic state of our society. 

Can we hear the alarm-bells ringing as we watch and encourage such technological developments?

the wedding busters

Extreme poverty, natural disasters and lack of education are causing an epidemic of child marriage in Bangladesh. Nearly a third of girls is married before they reach the age of 15, even though the legal age to be married is 18. It seems insane to marry off an 11-year-old, but what to do if you don't know how to feed your family and one flood after another hits your home? Parents see this as an escape, not realizing that this is only a short-term solution. Without education a precious generation is lost. A vicious circle of destructive traditions being passed on into a grim future.

This Human Rights Watch video puts a spotlight on this disaster, but after 8,5 minutes enter into the scene the pleasant surprise of "the wedding busters". This is a group of kids, soms as young as 12, who go around their community educating people. Taking responsibility for creating awareness, they have taken the future of their generation into their own hands. They explain that child marriage is illegal, that young girls are in great risk giving birth before their bodies are fully developed and that education is essential for future development.

These kids are creating child marriage-free zones! Parents who plan to marry off their daughter, actually stop to think twice and say: "You're right, she should go to school!"
The young wedding busters are so convincing, they have stopped half of all proposed child marriages in some of the regions where they are active.

Testimony from Plan International:

Manufa is one of many girls who have benefited. She was about to get married at 16 until the Wedding Busters spoke to her father.
"I wasn't aware that marriage under 18 is illegal and I didn't think her education was important," says Manufa's father. "I learned all this from the children."
Now with the wedding cancelled, Manufa is thriving at school and excited about her future. "When I finish school I want to be a nurse," she says.

This is one of those good news items, where credit must be given to young people changing their world and to the older ones who are humble enough to listen to them. May it be an inspiration to those of us somewhere in between.

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young,

but set an example for the believers in speech,

in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.

1 Timothy 4:12, NIV

today i will...

the better world: today i will...

Comment heard in a real-time, real-life conversation recently: "No, I don't watch the news anymore, it makes me nervous."

Today I will introduce you to the new link on my blogroll. A link for all those who feel nervous reading the newspaper and an encouraging link for those who dare to watch the news. "The Better World" is Renske's inspirational blog about baby-steps taken to improve the world around her, because "we make or break this world by our choices".

I love this! I sometimes feel the need of pointing out horrifying, hidden disasters or world issues on this blog. There are so many suffering people who really don't have much of a voice and this is a place where I choose to stand with them. Still, my favorite thing is looking for the tiniest starting point for each of us to be making this world a more beautiful place. 

Renske makes that very practical with her "today I will..." items. Making a difference starts today. Everyday.