One of the little boys is just six, and has been dealt a rough hand already.
His parents were in prison for the first three years or so of his life; he was often watched by his teenage aunts and lived with his grandfather. Not so long after his parents were out of prison and he was living back with them, his father was diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis and dangerously malnourished, so he was admitted to the clinic and then transferred to a tuberculosis isolation spot about two hours out of town. They whole family went.
They all returned months later, but just after school started. So he’s back to the familiar of our neighborhood, but doesn’t attend school while his friends do. He spends his days playing in our yard with two to four year olds.
He also asks every day if we are playing inside. We have tried to explain the days of the week and how certain days we play at 4pm and certain days we don’t. He’s not capturing all of it, so he now asks every morning: Are we playing at 4pm today? And we say yes or no. Picking our battles, at least he’s only asking once a day.
Last week his foot got caught in his dad’s bicycle. His ankle swelled quickly, so we took him to see if it was broken. It wasn’t broken, but sprained; and had a large cut on the side. Most of the instructions we gave weren’t heeded, so I began changing the bandages at our house.
A few more days went by, with bandages just not staying put. I decided since it was closed, we should just focus on getting antibiotic cream on it, rather than keeping it wrapped in gauze. Again, we’re picking battles carefully.
I took medicine to the mother and explained it to her.
Fast foward to today: our house is full of thirty-some children and adults, coloring, playing on the computers, playing market…they are everywhere. Suddenly I look down and see blood on the floor. Everywhere. There are large drops and smears of blood–everywhere. Covering most of the floor.
Thida, Stephen & I see it at nearly the same time, and we’re shouting all at once: Wait! Stop! WHO IS BLEEDING? BLOOD. WHO IS BLEEDING? WHO IS BLEEDING??
It took ridiculously long to figure out who, but it was little friend. His cut isn’t healing so well and broke open; and apparently he didn’t notice his trail.
I carried him into the kitchen to try to bandage him up. Thida very sweetly came in and asked him if his mom had put any of the medicine on it. He said no. She explained that his mom was “naughty” (not sure how else to translate that!) and wouldn’t put medicine on it. She made sure he understood to come to our house every day to get medicine.
He went back to playing, and then left at 6pm with the other kids.
About 6:30pm, he was at the door, calling for us.
“Stephen, are we going to play today at 4pm?”
“Well, we did, buddy. 4pm already came. We already played. But we’ll play tomorrow at 4pm, too.”
And then in English–“Don’t you remember playing? You bled out on our floor!”