Waldy

These are thoughts I have debated about sharing.

This was the scene in my house this weekend. Roselie and her son Waldy.
I could only imagine as a mother the feelings that must have been going on in her heart.

Waldy lives with Roselies sisters and their children about 4 hours from here.

Roselie has lived around here for quite a while since Port au Prince is where the work is. 

Waldy's dad was killed in the earthquake, so she must provide for them.

She visits about once a month to give her sisters money for Waldy to go to school and eat. 

But, here is the thing. Waldy is a few months older than TJ, six years old, he weighs 35 lbs. For a comparison our 6 year old (whom in all fairness is our most solid kid) weighs 52lbs. Our 3 year olds weigh about 30 lbs. 

This child is skin and bones. He is chronically malnourished and acutely very ill. 

His labs are awful, to look at him is appalling.

But, what to me is the most appealing is that we are here wanting to help and trying to help and right here under our nose is perhaps the sickest most poorly treated kid of them all. 

We tried to talk Roselie into letting him live with all of us when we first got here, but she said he was at school and could not leave.

So, here is the thing. When I started asking her today if he was being treated well, she said she did not think so. Yet, she is hoping to come home with us. 

She wants to come home with us, we want her to come home with us. He would never get a Visa, it is very questionable if she will even. 

I asked her if he would be okay if she was not in the country. She said she did not know. 

I told her we could help her if she stayed here and lived with him

she said that while she did not know if he would be okay here, she did know that without the opportunities the US has to offer her she knows they will never have a future here. 

The sad thing is that she is right. 

Today I do not like this country, I do not like the lack of opportunity for good people like Roselie and Johnny. I do not like that they really do have to "get out" in order to survive here. 

And I do not like that this mother that I have come to love like a sister sat in her room with her baby on her lap all day crying about the choices she has to make. 

But, choices have to be made and so after two days of in home treatment with antibiotics for one thing, antiparasitic for another thing, Malaria treatment and IV's it was decided that one sister would take him back home to the other sister whom he has know as "Mom" since he was 5 months old. 

(On a side note, IS and Justin helped me put the IV's in and did awesome, I was so proud!)