Michael and Andy

We’ve been home over a week, and I can’t get these children off my mind and my heart. I write about one child, and I feel a measure of peace, then I hear this whisper that I should tell another child’s story.

Michael

Michael is a young man who never got out of his bed while we were there. He had a seizure the first day we came. I have to wonder if our presence coming in suddenly and with so many of us was just too much for him. The nannies discouraged us from trying to move Michael. It is my understanding that he has MS, suffers from bed sores, has the issue with seizures, and his joints are pretty much locked up. Moving him might hurt him more than comfort him? We prayed over this child. We spoke with him. We tried to be the comfort he needed, to bring a little joy. I never saw this child smile.

From one of our team members -- “I had the chance to spend some time with him and got to feed him lunch. When I first sat down on his bed, he looked at me with such fear in his eyes. It broke my heart. I sang to him while I fed him and showed him pictures of my family. He eventually relaxed and curled his body around mine. It was a moving experience.”

Michael. Dear sweet Michael. Your life matters. You changed mine.


And Andy.

This little guy didn’t leave his crib. Well… he didn’t leave with the nannies’ permission. :) They didn’t tell us much about little Andy, except that he likes to run. As in escape…. I was working with some of the children one afternoon and saw a nanny come running out of the room Andy and Michael shared with the others. She gathered as many nannies as she could find as quickly as she could, and they began chasing Andy. Yes, this determined little guy had escaped his crib, escaped his room, and apparently was trying to escape the orphanage. They caught him before he went too far. It was obvious this was a pretty common occurrence. The little guy didn’t seem to have a great amount of thinking ability, but apparently there was some kind of thought process going, because he sure knew he wanted out!

Andy sat in his crib, or rather, hung over the sides of his crib, and reached out for anyone who was passing by. If you came within arms reach, he was going to grab on and hold on! He had a tremendous problem with drooling, and when I was in the room with him, he was either hanging his head over the side of the crib with drool flowing from his mouth straight down to puddle on the floor or sitting in his bed moving his body side to side, and making a growling noise.

I asked someone his name, and they told me he was called Animal. Wow! I did not like that! I couldn’t imagine even the most uncaring nanny on the planet giving a name like this to a child. I could barely stand to think of the injustice. After we left the orphanage, I mentioned how much this bothered me to another team member. She assured me it was a nickname given in love by a person who thought the young boy was rather endearing. He was given this nickname by a person who loved the Muppets. You know, Kermit, Miss Piggy, and…..Animal! Thinking about that name from this perspective gave me an entire new insight on the nickname. If you remember the Muppets, Animal was a character we all wanted to see more of. He didn’t speak. He had this gravelly growl he used to communicate, he was quite often running to random places, and seldom acted if the rules were meant to be followed. Andy, our little Animal. Makes me smile when I think of him and the way he overcomes his tremendous challenges to try to enjoy the experience of simply being a little boy, because boys will be boys you know….