Just a single tear

Just when you think that the sun is going to appear, another nasty rain cloud shows up to drench everything, again. That’s how it is here at the moment, both with regards to the weather and the people that we’re trying to help. Days in the hospital are particularly difficult, it is not just the out of date facilities, it is also the fact that diseases are allowed to progress much further here before treatment is sought.

Little two month old Alexandre; he's back on oxygen. His parents were elated to hear on Monday that their son would be fine. Yesterday one of the local volunteers and I had to tell them that their son needs surgery. In Europe. The fear, frustration and devastation on their faces I will never forget. Just a little something their doctor omitted to tell them…as I stand on the ward I look over at the little girl next to him on the bed. She's tiny, has a pretty face. My gaze drifts to the venflon in her hand, I am shocked as I realise that her hand is the colour of my skin; white. I stare at her chest, is she breathing? I don't see anything and wonder if she's dead. Yet her mother is sitting there, protectively watching over her.

As I leave the ward a child comes running towards us from another building. She looks likes she belongs in a Discovery Channel program. Huge tumours on her face have completely morphed the structure of her face to the point where her eyes are at hugely different levels and her head is almost twice the size it should be. Only a very good craniofacial surgeon will be able to give her a chance at a normal life.

Walking to another ward I go past a waiting area. There are only two posters, located right next to each other: one by the Togo tourist board advertising Togo as the smile of Africa, the other by the World Health Organisation, illustrating the dangers of Noma (a gangrenous disease that leads to the destruction of facial tissue) with graphic pictures of children whose faces have almost completely disintegrated. Keep smiling. Then a body is wheeled past, covered only in a beautiful vibrantly coloured African cloth and a sheet of clear blue plastic. A foot pokes out of this ensemble, disturbing.

On the maternity ward I visit a woman with severe vomiting and diarrhoea, and a long list of other complaints. She can not stand on her own accord and looks frighteningly thin. She had her child a few days ago, 4 weeks premature. On Tuesday she told us that she wasn’t worried, her child was taller and heavier than some of the others. Tuesday night a call came in to tell us it had passed away. As I wonder whether this tiny baby was wrapped in beautiful cloth and clear plastic too, a tear glistens in the corner of her eye. It eventually trickles over the rim, to glide down the side of her face.

So much emotion, all contained in just a single quiet tear.