Folic Acid.

Two Thursdays ago Shundel and I stumbled upon a boy in diapers. He was probably 8 or 9, had two crooked feet, two shriveled legs, and a grapefruit sized lump at the base of his spine. Leaving the house I could taste the tears in my throat. What future does a boy like that have in a place like this? How could God let a child like that be born in a place like this? 

People here are money poor but relatively resource rich. There are trees loaded with breadfruit, papaya, and bananas. Just climb them. Fences are covered with passion fruit. Pick them. Water coconut is an excellent electrolyte replacing drink if anyone gets dehydrated. Chop a hole and drink up. A piece of basil put in the ground will grow roots within days. But is it a place for a boy who can not walk? No. How is he to survive? He will just be a burden and probably be thrown out or died young, never to marry, never to go to school, never to run, or even voluntarily relieve himself. Worse, my guess is that a timely dose of folic acid would have circumnavigated the whole situation. I thought, “That child and his mother need Jesus, but what she really needed was some folic acid.” Standing there I wished that I had the power to heal, but more than that I wished I had the power to prevent.

I spent the next Tuesday morning at Mabaruma Hospital helping with the weekly maturity clinic. About 30 pregnant women came for a check up. I took their blood pressure, weighed them, gave and read a simple urine test (protein, pH, glucose). Then they were off to Nurse Jesse. After I was done admitting everyone I went back to Nurse Jesse too and watched as she measured the height of the uterine fundus, found the fetal heartbeat in appropriate cases, and sometimes checked their iron levels. The women are also tested twice for HIV during the course of their pregnancies. Nurse Jesse then gave them the a supply of iron and folic acid supplements to last until their next clinic day. I helped where I could; tried measuring the fundul height, heard the hearts beat, and folded pill envelopes. Jesse asked me to pour 14 pills into an envelope and I grabbed the bottle of folic acid by its unsecured top sending the whole bottle open onto the floor. Pills skittered away. 

Nurse Jesse laughed at me, the pregnant mother laughed at me, I laughed at myself. But as I swept up the pills I saw the boy in his diaper sitting in the dirt. 

The women who come to maternity clinic come mostly from the areas around Mabaruma. That could mean walking a few miles, riding on the back of a motorcycle, or catching a bus-or a mix of any of those. Some make the trip in from the river, paddling a dugout canoe from their homes to the town of Kumaka and then walking or taking a bus up the hill to Mabaruma. I don’t know how long the trips are to retrieve their iron and folic acid. But they come in on their assigned day, cushioning their unborn children as best they can. But what about the boy’s mother? I don’t know where she was when she was carrying him. He is living in Mabaruma Settlement now-under five miles from the hospital and shorter then that to a place where busses go. Did she come and get unlucky? Were they out of folic acid because someone spilled? Was she unable to come? Ignorant? Or was she just lazy? In order to know how to prevent I think it necessary to know the perpetrator. Why was a child like that born in a place like this? 

But God. But God, as he so often does, takes the thing we are so focused on in our attempts to help and shifts the focus. Takes our perspective and injects it with something that defies human logic. In John 9, when the boy was born blind, Jesus answered those seeking the perpetrator as such, “His blindness has nothing to do with his sins or his parents’ sins. He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him.” [John 9:3] Who “caused” this is irrelevant. That child was born to show God’s power working. Just as I was. He is not broken beyond repair. He is still as fit for the purpose for which he was created as I am. Can I, believing in a all powerful God, believe too that a boy who can not walk or control his bladder has been forgotten by God? That his birth was an accident or oversight? That he has no future? That God has no use for him? I cannot. I don't know what plans God has for that child and I am not really sure what this all means yet. But somehow God is still present.