Saturday, August 31, 2013

JACKIE

When you work with kids, you get attached, you can't help it. When I was in Ghana, I got attached to a sweet little girl called Akosua, but I called her Sally. She was sick when I met her, and after much time we had a diagnosis, which is not easy in Africa. There's not much to work with. She had TB, and was doing well by the time I had to leave the country. She died about a month after I left.

I just got back from the orphanage where a student of mine, Jackie, is lying dead. Nobody knows why, but he's dead. He's been sick for a while, on and off, but there's not much to work with here, like in Ghana.

Dr. Sion, bless his heart, tried his very best to figure out what was wrong, but nothing worked.

Please don't respond to this blog, it won't help. I just wanted somebody to know that a sweet, funny little 7 year old boy who was just enjoying being a kid is dead. Even if nobody out there knows him, we did, and he meant a lot to us.

Sometimes I hate this place.