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Malaria Has a Name

I woke up this morning ready to go to church in Lietnhom, South Sudan.  I mean, it’s Sunday and even though I’m in Africa I was doing what I regularly do on Sundays which is to fellowship with other Believers.  I was told church starts at 9am so about 8:50 I walked over to the church – a grove of very large fig trees which created a large canopy for us to worship underneath.  The only problem was that I was on American time.  A 9am church service in Africa can actually start anywhere from 9am to about 9:45 and today it was going to start, well, not at 9am.  So I sat there by myself on a rickety “pew” of a bench and I prayed. 

I have to admit that sometimes it’s hard for me to pray for more than :60 seconds before I get distracted or – sadly – bored.  But not today.  I was amazed at how easily my prayers came.  Africa has a way of softening my heart.  I prayed for my family, my job, the people of South Sudan and I prayed for, by name, all the people I had interviewed the day before.  It all felt so natural to just talk with the God of the universe – my Creator.  I ended my prayer inspired and at peace.  I felt like I connected with God – but God was about to connect with me in a way I had never experienced. Today was the day God gave me the gift of witnessing a bona fide, life- saving, miracle.

Sure enough, church eventually began and toward the end of the service they asked for those needing prayer to come forward.  A woman named Mary came to the front holding her very sick son who, we found out later, was named Peter.  As soon as this woman laid her son before the church two things happened: 1. People came forth to pray, and 2. the man seated behind me said under his breath (but clearly) “The boy has malaria.  He needs to get to the clinic.”  His comment was heard by many of the World Concern staff who were sitting around him too and I heard mumblings and discussions occur quickly.  So we prayed for the child and church was soon thereafter dismissed.  I turned around to talk to the man who mentioned the clinic and found out that his name was Daniel and he was actually the one in charge of the clinic.  As we began talking I noticed the woman we had prayed for carrying her son away from the church down a dirt path…alone.  My colleague Derek immediately saw this too and he, along with Harun (The World Concern staff person who heads up the work in this village) chased her down the path to talk with her further.  Usually when I hear the word “intervention” I think of an addict’s family stepping in, but this was an intervention as well…and it saved Peter’s life.  Shortly thereafter Mary and her son were put in a World Concern vehicle and taken to the clinic several kilometers away.

When I arrived at the clinic about 10 minutes later I was ushered into the room where Peter was being helped.  An IV drip had been inserted into his right hand and he was given a cool cloth to cover his body to help reduce the fever.  The clinic was very primitive, but it had what Peter needed – anti-malarial medicine.  As I watched and tried to stay out of the way I found myself praying for Peter and his mom.  In the midst of these silent prayers I started to overhear more of the background to Peter’s illness.  He had been sick five days. As per local tradition his mother had taken Peter to the local witch doctor (called a Spearmaster) who had given Peter herbal medicine and told them not to go to the clinic.  Peter had not gotten better, obviously, and the mother had brought her to the church for prayer.  As the mood in the room became less tense Daniel, the Clinic Director, said “This boy would have been dead in 6 hours.”  Seriously?  Six hours?  But then, the miracle.  Daniel said “If you come back in three hours you’ll see this boy already feeling better.  Within 24 hours he will be almost normal and within five days he will have no effect from the malaria.”  I was overwhelmed.  I had to leave the room.  Never had I witnessed a child so close to death…not die.

And you know who I thought about during all this?  My soon-to-be adopted daughters from Ethiopia.  The reason Lidya and Tsion were relinquished to an orphanage was because their father had not only seen his wife die from a liver disease, but Lidya and Tsion had two sisters die from malaria.  What was that like for them to see their sisters get as sick as Peter?  What was that like for their father to watch two of his children die?  Even now, tears fill my eyes several hours later as I write this.  I can’t even imagine.

On every trip I take like this I try to come home with a souvenir that is truly unique and will remind me to pray for the people I met on that trip.  Usually you can’t buy these souvenirs because typically they are things I pick up that are discarded.  That’s why if you come into my office you’ll see a piece of rubble from Haiti, you’ll see rice husks from Tanzania, you’ll wonder why I have a Massai cowbell, and, you’ll see a bottle of very dirty water from Kenya.  Today, I added to my collection: an empty IV drip bottle labeled “D5 Glucose Intravenous Infusion BP 50g/L” from the health clinic in South Sudan that saved Peter’s life. 

Malaria may be a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, but today, for me, malaria had a single name: Peter.  And from this day forward every day that Peter lives will be a miracle.  I know it was a miracle…because I was there.