Galeto's Big Move

It has been two weeks now since Galeto came home to live with us. His progress has been remarkable. There is a smile most of the time on his face and he is steadily eating us out of house and home! haha! But I don't care because I can see he is making good progress. He is much stronger now and not so feeble. Some days we carry him outdoors to get some fresh air. Sometimes we carry him out to the living room to watch a movie with us, or to join in on sunday evening Bible study. (He likes our singing, but seems to lose interest once the preaching begins. Kind of like some folks we all know! haha)

Every three days it is time to change his bandages. It is such torture, for him AND me. Please pray that he will heal quickly so that neither one of us has to do this much longer. Each day I do some sort of physical therapy on him. Stretching his bent legs, stretching his bent arms. It hurts him but it has to be done. I know how it feels since I have gone through similar experiences as a child recovering from hip surgery. I was in a full body cast for 3 months and had to learn to walk again. Now I am thankful for that experience because I can empathize with Galeto and push him through his pain toward a better life.

Some days are worse than others. He moans and cries out in his sleep, probably dreaming about when he was set on fire. This happened almost 8 months ago. There is no telling what kind of emotional trauma this has had on him. He doesnt try to talk very much. A very quiet boy. But his smile lights his face up and THAT speaks volumes!

Several church members have come to see him and have prayed for him, tears streaking down his cheeks, he was visibly moved to have them there. They reminded him that God didn’t want him to die. He was burned over 50% of his body, a life threatening critical injury. Everyone at the hospital thought he would die. But he didn’t.

I asked them to tell him that God has a plan for his life, a good future, that's why he lived. That's why he is living with us right now, so that through Tom and I and other people here, Galeto can see and feel Gods love and have hope for a good future......

church women come and offer prayers and songs for Galeto

Shamaya's Joy

When I first moved to Ethiopia and would tell people my name, Teresa, they usually ask me what it means. I thought that was a strange thing to ask, but soon I came to know that in   They were kind of embarrassed for me too!

Ethiopia, everyones’ name means something. I was kind of embarrassed to say “umm, nothing.”

                                                                                

Typical ones I hear are Genet which means “Blessing” or if born near a holiday like easter Tinsai (means “Resurrection”), Ferris (means horse), and if the baby looks like the father- Hulemaya (“Seems like me”)

I have already told you about my young friend Zakarias. He is the 14 yr old boy with the terrible infection on his head. I first met him through a tragedy in his family. His father contracted malaria and it went cerebral-made him delirious and violent and one night with

his machete he killed his own 8 yr old daughter, Hannah. After a short time in the hospital and then some jail time, he was released. As horrific as this was, Shamaya(his wife) allowed him to come back into their home. When friends asked her about this decision, she told them that she is a christian and God still loved him. (although lots of this explanation was lost in the translation-basically she said she loved him.

I could not fathom reacting like that. But life went on...I continued to take Zak to the hospital 3x week for dressing changes...and then came the news that his mother was pregnant. Wow. I was stunned. But nine months later, the baby was born. It was a girl and she was named,”Asserasach”, which means “because of you my sorrow is forgotten”. Shamaya, a strong Christian woman, had prayed to the Lord to give her another child-a girl-to ease the sorrow in her heart. And so there she was! Shamaya was holding her baby and was beaming, her face was radiant with joy and peace-and a broken family was healed.

Galeto Update 2

When I returned to Ethiopia after the summer in Texas, I was anxious to see how Galeto was doing. I hoped that the measures I had taken had proved to be helpful to him, and that he had continued to make progress.

When I saw him I cried inside. He was pitiful. Still laying in a filthy sheet, curled into a fetal position with his head completely covered, as if to shut out the world around him. Even worse, he could not walk now. No one ever made him get out of bed to walk and exercise his limbs, and so his legs had atrophied,to the point that they are now bent permanently. My heart ached for him. He had been doing so well when I left.

I guess that the absence of someone who cared for him (even me, a relative stranger to him), left him with no more hope. He simply withdrew into himself. Although Tom and a few friends of mine had gone to see him in my absence, they said that he never uncovered his head or talked to them. 

After the shock of seeing him like this, I was more determined than ever to help this boy. There is a male nurse named Terefu who has always been very helpful to me. He is the one who had been teaching me how to change the dressings on Galetos’ burns.

I found him and made an appointment to change the dressings the next day. I went out and searched the entire town looking for 4x4 gauze bandages, but none were to be found. With 6-7 drugstores, none of them had gauze bandages. The hospital was completely out and they had several nurses cutting up rolls of gauze into 4” squares. (The conveniences of Walgreens and CVC Drugstores are unheard of here....be thankful if you have them where you live!).

I won't go into detail of the ordeal involved with cleaning and changing burn wounds, but it is incredibly painful. I went out and bought him some pain meds and syringes for injections to help the pain. It gave him small relief. This is a public, government run hospital. People are admitted all the time, but the burden of paying for the medicine, latex gloves worn by doctors, bandages, IV bags, etc.. all must be paid for by the patient and his family and relatives. Also the daily care of feeding, emptying bedpans, etc, all done by family members. Every patient has a small cluster of people around him all the time all day long. Except Galeto. He is all alone.

But not anymore! Tom and I are taking him home with us to care for him there.
I don’t know how long it will be for. He will need future surgeries to un-fuse his chin from his chest, but that will have to wait for now. He is too weak to survive any surgeries and too weak to survive what would be an agonizing 9 hour drive over bumpy roads to Addis. (I was told there is a burn unit in a hospital there. Who knows what the level of care is? But the beds are all filled right now.)

So, he goes home with us! Our housekeeper speaks Wolaiyta (Galetos tribal language) and so she will be a huge help in healing this boy emotionally. She will be able to tell him all the things I’ve wanted to say to encourage him. And he will be comforted and kissed every night by someone who cares for him. And together we can show him that God loves him and has not forgotten him! 

I’ll keep you posted on his recovery.

In His joyful service,
Teresa

Galeto...a boy not forgotten by God

I first heard of him from our friend Dr. Barry, the Australian surgeon here in Arba Minch. We were at our usual Sunday evening Bible study and he mentioned some of the cases he was currently operating on. One in particular, caught my attention. A street boy had been brought to the hospital. He was approx. 17 yrs old. He is one of those kids that have no family, no relatives, and so he must survive any way he can. He has no home, so he simply finds a place out of the way where he can curl up and sleep at night. One night while he was sleeping, a cruel, evil man doused him with gasoline and set him on fire, then left him to die. I couldn't get that poor boy out of my mind, so I went the next morning to try and find him in the hospital.

I walked through the ward, bed by bed until I saw him. He was curled up in a fetal position with his back to the room. This was Galeto. 

He was horribly burned over 50% of his entire upper body-shoulders and both arms-and his chin had fused to his chest from scar tissue. He had already been in the hospital for 2 months. He has no family-no parents-no friends- no one has come to see him. He is all alone, and in great pain. There is no pain medication for him. When they change his bandages and cleanse his wounds-they used a dry sponge to scrape his raw, tender red wounds. Can you imagine his agony? Absolutely nothing is ever given to him to cope with the pain. He has no money to pay for medicine or bandages. Dr. Barry said he basically had given up living and wanted to die. Who can blame him?

So I knelt down alongside him and stroked his cheek, and told him that God loves him. He has seen your suffering and sent me to help you. Can I be your friend? He arched his eyebrows (that means yes in their culture), and with that I had a new friend! 

By the time I met him, none of the nurses liked him because he soiled his bed all the time. Bedpans are available, but it is the family’s responsibility to help the patient use the pan and to clean it out. Galeto had no one to help him with this and so he would just lay in his own feces and urine all day long. All week long. I am not exaggerating.

The first time I began to help wash and cleanse his wounds, he had a soiled sheet that he had wrapped up in a pile hiding his feces. I know he was ashamed to be like that-but what could he do? No one would help him-not even the nurses. He was completely alone and naked. His only clothing was burned off him. So I bought him a couple of t-shirts and shorts and underwear and a pair of sandals. Then I got him up out of bed and started walking. I got someone to translate for me and told him that he must exercise his arms especially or he would lose the use of them. The scar tissue had already started to draw his arms up. After a few days of me coming he started to smile and seemed eager to get out of bed and walk. I knew the nurses and other patients didn’t like Galeto, mainly because he couldn’t use the bedpan and he stank. So I wondered how I could get them to rally around him-to start to like him? 
 
I know that God planted this idea in my head to go buy some packages of cookies. I brought them to Galeto and suggested that he share them with the other men in the ward. I will never forget this image I have of him. A poor, wounded boy, wrapped only with a towel around his waist and wearing a tank top-his arms bandaged up, walking over to each man in a bed and offering them a cookie. Some of them looked confused at first, but then they all smiled at him (and me) and said thank you. Galeto was wearing one of those grins that stretch from ear to ear! It was probably the first time in his life that he was able to actually share with someone-to give a gift to someone else. It was a powerful moment. Since that day, things seemed to have changed in the ward. The men smiled at us- the nurses started calling out encouragement to Galeto when we walked. He was making some good progress.

I knew I was going to be leaving in a few weeks to go to America to visit my family. I was concerned about his continued recovery without me there. So I made arrangements with a restaurant to deliver him lunch every other day. And with another person to bring him boiled eggs every other day. I asked several of my friends to go visit him from time to time.

I was hopeful that with that support system surrounding him, he would continue to progress. And so, I left for America.