(Lesley is a retired paediatric neurologist from the UK who worked for 5 years at the Good News Hospital after her retirement, and has since been back or two shorter spells as “locum”).
I am in Bananaville (the real name is Ambalafontsy which means ‘surrounded by banana trees’). I have come by Helimission helicopter to this remote village on the edge of the rainforest and two days’ walk from Mandritsara as part of the regular outreach of the Good News Hospital community health team. A small team of evangelists and paramedics are with me.
My task is to see those who are sick. My first patient is a child with severe malaria. Next a young mother brings her two week old baby boy. He is plump and healthy but has a big bulge in his scrotum. I am no surgeon, but I know enough to tell a hernia from a hydrocele and this one looks like it needs operating on. The paramedic who is helping me normally works in the operating theatre, and he agrees. The question is, how urgent is the operation? I decide to consult the surgeon back at the Good News Hospital, but this is not simple. (Nothing here is simple!). First I have to find our evangelist, who knows where to locate the one spot near the village that has a phone signal. I drag him away from the village hall where he is busy registering the first of about 80 babies queuing up for 10 different vaccinations.
Together we climb to the top of a very steep small hill behind the village, which is in full sunlight making phone screens invisible. My phone still tells me there is no signal, but his works; however, he has no phone credit left. He walks all the way back down to the village to buy scratch cards with phone credit and keys in the numbers to his invisible screen. Eventually we connect, but the surgeon is in the middle of an operation. Try again and praise the Lord, the paediatric surgery expert comes to the phone and there is just enough credit for him to finish his advice. The sooner the hernia is repaired, he says, the safer for the baby, because sooner or later it will cause trouble likely to be fatal. He suggests that if the baby can come with the helicopter on its return flight the next day, it could be operated on the day after.
We tell all this to the mother who listens in silence – whether overwhelmed or sceptical it is hard to say. She says that she will have to discuss it with her husband and family back in her own village (two hours’ walk away). Our paramedic tells her that if they decide to come with the helicopter, they must send word that evening by a ‘runner’ so that we can arrange it with the helicopter pilot. He is fairly convinced that they will not take up the offer. Sure enough, no runner arrives that evening.
But on the following morning, as our team is preparing to move on to the next village, both mother and father turn up with baby and an overnight bag. There’s only one spare seat in the helicopter so only mother can go with baby, but father will follow on foot. She stows her luggage in the helicopter, climbs in and closes her eyes. First we fly to a another rainforest village to leave the rest of the team and pick up other patients, and then on to Mandritsara. For Mum, this is probably her first visit to the Big City and she is completely alone. Worse still, her bag with her money and few necessities is not on the helicopter. Probably it was offloaded by mistake with the rest of the team in the other village.
In the Good News Hospital, you cannot really be admitted unless you have a companion to look after you – for food, drink and laundry - and this poor girl has no one and now no money. An elderly gentleman who has travelled with us from the second village is very solicitous and repeatedly explains her predicament but this does not solve it. I take her to be admitted to the surgical ward and listed for operation on the next day, and explain the problem to the ward staff.
In the afternoon, feeling very sorry for her isolation and helplessness, I go back to see her with a bottle of drinking water, a cup, a packet of biscuits and some rags for cleaning the baby. I’m quite surprised to see that already she has 2 visitors, plus a large bottle of burnt-rice water on the bedside table, so I go and talk to the nurse in charge. My fears for the mother’s predicament have been quite wide of the mark; the wonderful Malagasy extended family/community responsibility system has already clicked into place. The nurse tells me that the girl’s father had phoned ahead to relatives or acquaintances living in Mandritsara, and they have undertaken to provide the three times daily cooked rice rations. These are the visitors. The head nurse provides some soap and we even get some disposable nappies from a missionary cache.
The baby is operated on the next day. He is in good condition and the operation goes well. Father arrives (he must have run!) and the baby is fit to be discharged on the following day so they can travel home together.
A happy ending – a very young life protected from a likely abdominal catastrophe further down the line, a vindication of the Malagasy community network which overcomes all travel and communication difficulties, and to ice the gingerbread, that travel bag turned up with the helicopter on the day they were ready to walk home!
Thank you Helimission! which, like MAF, relies on the support of Christians worldwide for most of its funding, and reaches parts of Madagascar which other agencies, including the government, just can’t.
And thank you, Lord, that not only have this little family seen and experienced God’s love in action through the kindness and care of His people, but also they have heard the Good News of the Lord Jesus through the preaching both by the team in the village, and in the hospital and the personal sharing of the gospel by the staff.
Pray for this little family that God might bring them to trust in the Lord Jesus and be saved.
Pray for Helimission – for the helicopter and pilot, for safety and success for their flights, and for financial support.
Pray for the Community Health Team as they plan the visits to these many remote villages, that the Lord might keep their faith and vision strong.
Pray that the Lord might call retired medical doctors like Lesley, who are committed Christians, who speak some French, and who have strength to serve the Lord here for a few months or a few years. The hospital has found such doctors to be invaluable in the past, and has a great need for such help in the near future.