I went to the hospital today to assist a young woman who is having a difficult pregnancy. That’s not how things turned out tho. While searching for a place to get her checked in, we ended up waiting in line at the emergency room of the government hospital. God help us. It wasn’t but 2 minutes before I parted ways with Kevin and the young woman and ended up spending the entire day with this street kid instead. It was a horrid sight. His leg was mangled, broken, bleeding. He was screaming, a mess. He was all alone. I watched for a little while as I tried to make sense of the situation. He had been run over by a car. I don’t know how long he had already been there, but I quickly found out that he had not yet even been given pain killers. That part was obvious. There was meat hanging out of the broken part of his leg. I held his head and hushed him. He immediately calmed down. I talked with him and tried to calm him with reassuring touch. He would intermittently start screaming and crying from the extreme pain of his broken leg, then let me hush and calm him some more. The entire hospital watched me, but no one would help. Welcome to the Ugandan hospital system. He cried for porridge. He was thinking about porridge in this condition?! Yes, he was starving. I wondered how long it has been since he last ate. I bought him 3 boiled eggs from a man selling them nearby. I gave him water. I finally got the doctor to come and was told they’d only work on him if he had “a book.” A book is a little notebook that costs less than a nickel. If I got that then the doctor would talk to me more. I went down the road and bought the book so that I could return and start the whole process of trying to get help all over again. After giving them the book (which was immediately lost), they gave me the shopping list and prescriptions for the necessary materials to work on him. The hospital itself has nothing. You have to leave to purchase everything you need, even things as basic as rubber gloves and medication. I went back outside of the hospital down the exact same street and got everything we needed from a pharmacy. My first priority was getting the boy pain medication. They administered it wrong, but at least it was in his system. For a short time, he fell asleep before the pain took over again. Let me tell you…that boy was strong. All day I sat with him and will be returning shortly. It’s all a horrifying story, but let me just end here.

A 12 year old street kid named Reagan. Sparing you the graphic angle of his leg injury. What I will say is that this is one tough kid. I can’t even begin to imagine the hurt this boy has seen in his life. 

I thought I was tough, that I had the right sort of character to handle even difficult situations. I might have been wrong. Abba, this boy needs you. I need you. I was never trained for this. Never prepared. We’re looking for a “mommy” that he says he has…but he’s a registered street kid and I’m not so sure that even if we find her that it will offer us any salvation. Situations are complicated here. No one has anything. Hospitals, especially government hospitals, are hell on earth. I’ve already seen it too many times. People were dying around me today. I was in the Emergency, Accident and Casualty Ward. On the outside, I’m functioning just fine. On the inside, there’s a whole lot that I don’t even know how to begin to process. And so write. Because I don’t know how else to make sense of this broken day.

And can I admit? I’ve kept my distance from the street kids. They’re often razor sharp when it comes to thievery. I’m not afraid of much, but I surely am wary of them. It’s bothered me to be afraid of a child and yet the street kids are hard to trust. Funny how God doesn’t really care what you’re afraid of. Today I sat by this scared little boy and found out that he is 12 years old and that his name is Reagan. I learned that his dad is dead. I saw his heart and it broke mine.

Despite everything, there’s goodness in today and, for me, that came in the form of seeing past the broken surface of a boy that everyone else refused.

Was grateful to leave the situation for just a moment to pick up my little peanut from school. She came back to the hospital with me and kept our friend, Reagan, company. Sharon is a trooper. I can assure you, the government is not fun. 

~Originally posted on Facebook Feb 25th, 2017