Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Social Work

Several times in the last two years I've longed to pick up the phone and call a social worker to come in and rescue me and my clients from some crazy situation. One of the beautiful things about life in the USA is that we have lots of safety nets. Those safety nets simply don't exist here in Kenya.

Last night my family and I were on our way back from a few days in the Kakamega Rainforest. It is one of my favorite getaways and I'll try to get some pictures of our trip up later today or tomorrow. We were on our way home and just a few miles from our house when I got a phone call from the nurse I left in charge at the clinic.

He informed me that a woman had delivered at the clinic and was saying she did not want her baby and would not take him home. I was requested to come and help deal with the situation. Abortion is illegal here in Kenya so when women want to terminate a pregnancy they usually try to do it on their own. Often women will drink laundry soap or take an herbal concoction. In this case the mom told us she had made two unsuccessful attempts. She made it clear that she had no interest in the baby boy whatsoever.

Our staff told me that they were afraid if they asked her to take the baby back to her family that she would throw him in the river. We didn't have any formula on hand and it would have been impossible to get any until the next day.

It was one of those situations where you take a deep breath and pray.

After much discussion I proposed that we buy time by asking her to stay overnight and have someone stay with her and the baby. Then we would have some time to think and pray through the situation. She agreed and I brought her a hot meal.

Word began to get out that there was an abandoned baby and we had several infertile women come forward asking for the baby.

These are times when I thank God for my incredibly wise husband. William pointed out that things needed to be handed in a very legal way so that no disasters would come up in the future. No one from our community knew this woman. For all we know she could show up in a month suing us for stealing her baby. He proposed that we take her to the chief's office and have her sign papers to relinquish her parental rights. So that is exactly what we did this morning.

We also sent the families interested in taking the baby to the chief. I'm not quite sure how it will all work out but I was thankful that the chief was willing to get involved in this case. So often I get in a situation like this one and think to myself "We need to call in some help" and then I remember that I am the help that was called!

Please join me in praying for this precious baby boy. God obviously has a plan for his life! Once I know where he winds up I'll let you know.

No comments: