Emmanuel Otoo

Last Sunday I was in Koforidua attending a church service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When the meeting was over the group and I headed to the internet café a few blocks away. Koforidua is one of the bigger cities near Kibi. The market was booming and we almost got run over by a taxi. It has more people, bigger buildings, and faster internet. On our way to the café, we past homeless person after homeless person on the street, asking for money and food. We kept our heads down and kept walking, trying not to feel bad. But one person caught our eye. A little boy, who’s brown shirt and pants were falling off his tiny bony body. He didn’t ask for money or even food. He just sat there on the step of a building, slouched over with one of his frail arms laid out on his lap and his hand open. I wanted to give him money, but all I had was a 5 Cedi/ dollar bill. Natalie walked over to him and she handed him 20 Pesewas/ cents. Once I was closer I could see that one of his eyes was red and glazed over. His cheek bones were protruding out and his eyes were sunken. Once he had the Pesewa in his hand, he whispered mada es/ thank you. Natalie and I turned around and ran to catch up with our group.

The internet café was on the second floor of the apartment/ business building. Next to it was a café, with spaghetti and American food. Natalie and I decided to wait our turn on the computers and eat lunch first. I got a spaghetti dish with chicken and she had a club sandwich and fries. When we were done I realized I still had a full bowl of spaghetti. We talked about it and decided that if he was still there we would give the extra food to the little boy we saw earlier. So Natalie and I went off to the building we had seen him near. When we got there he was no where to be found. We asked around but no one knew who or where he was. Finally I recognized a security guard I had seen earlier and asked if he knew where the little boy in the brown shirt had gone. He looked at the food in my hands and the water in Natalie’s and left his post to look for him with us. We finally found him three streets over in a park. The guard ran ahead and brought him to us. Natalie and I found a little wooden bench for him to sit on and I opened the Styrofoam box with the spaghetti. He just looked at it for the longest time and then slowly put his bony fingers in the noodles and brought some up to his mouth. He ate so slowly I began to realize every movement was such a struggle for him. A crowd of passersby formed around us and they congratulated us on our Christ like work. They told us we were like the good Samaritan. Natalie got so mad, and angrily signed to me, that they all could be doing the same service we are. One woman told us that the Koforidua central hospital was close by and Natalie and I decided we would take a taxi and bring him there. Natalie ran back to the café to tell the others and to grab our bags. A women got a taxi for us and I tried to get the boy up over to it. But as soon as he stood up, his legs gave out and he came crashing to the ground at my feet. Trying to hold back emotion I picked him up and another boy helped me carry him to the taxi. Natalie and I sat on either side of him and I put the food on his lap so he could continue eating. When the car started the momentum threw the boy back into the seat. So the rest of the car ride I had my arm around his shoulders and Natalie had her hand on his back so that he could sit up and eat. Natalie burst into tears and I asked him what his name was. He didn’t understand English, but the taxi driver started to translate for me. We found out that his name is Emmanuel Otoo.

The taxi dropped us off at the hospital entrance and Natalie and I guided Emmanuel out of the car. The hospital was hell. I had heard stories about hospitals in third world countries but I never expected to be in one. Natalie sat down with Emmanuel and I ran back and forth with the nurses and orderlies. They kept giving me the run around. First I was sent to an office window, who then sent me to a group of nurses who sent me to a random doctor, who sent me to a man watching football/soccer on TV, who sent me to the office window again. Finally we got some paperwork for him and the nurses started to check his blood pressure and weight. They couldn’t fit the blood pressure cuff around his tiny arm and had to get another one. Then they asked him how old he was and he told them 16. One nurse started laughing but put 16 down as his age anyway. To me he didn’t look older than 10. But whatever his age, when he stood on the scale to be weighed my stomach dropped to the floor. He weighted 23 kilograms. Which we are guessing is around 51 pounds. While I had been running around, Natalie had an older couple translate for her. Emmanuel told her that his parents had divorced and he didn’t know where his father was. His mother remarried and his stepfather told his mother he could not take care of Emmanuel anymore and that she had to chose between him and her son. She put Emmanuel out on the street and he has lived there ever since. She asked him where he had been sleeping and he told her under taxis and cars. He also told her that he had diabetes. So when we told the nurses this they checked his blood and found he had a very high glucose level. They needed to bring that down or he would die. We followed the nurses and Emmanuel into the main building where they were going to have him wash up and give him the medication he needed. What a horror this building was, yellow lights above cast a dim glow over everything and patients sat on torn up chairs in a narrow hallway. Some were doubled over in pain others were screaming. Three beds were shoved into the corner with patients on them hooked up to IVs. The smell of urine and lime cleaner filled the air. It was just chaos. Nurses and doctors rushing by shoving people out of the way. There was Emmanuel, walking slowly down the hall to an empty chair, with only his brown pants on, tied up with a rope. His large rounded belly was sticking out slightly to the left, and his paper thin skin was stretched over his bony ribs, chest, and shoulders. I've seen kids like this on TV and in pictures, but having him right in front of me was something I don’t think I could have ever been prepared for.

When he sat down, a male nurse put an IV in his arm and hooked it to the wall behind him. Natalie and I sat on either side of him and watched as his arm immediately started to bleed and the medication started to drip out. I found out later that because he was so malnourished his veins had collapsed. We were trying to get the attention of a nurse or doctor, when Natalie gave her seat away to a very pregnant women, who was having contractions. Then on my left a man burst through the doors with a little girl in his arms. Her leg was bleeding and broken and the broken half of it was flopping around as he swung her to and fro trying to get help. A nurse put her in a wheelchair and rolled her in the busy hallway, bumping the doors and walls as they went. She then parked her wheelchair right next to me and left. So on our right we had a woman about to give birth and on our left we had a screaming bleeding child and in-between us sat Emmanuel, skin and bones and barely able to keep his head up.

Heavenly Father works in so many ways. We eventually got Emmanuel a bed and another IV. We found an orphanage near Kibi. They couldn’t take him in but they did get us connected with Ghana’s Assisted Aid. The social worker was very difficult to work with. We had to fight to get Emmanuel assistance. Everything was worth it, when the next day, Natalie and I went into the ward Emmanuel was staying in and saw him sitting up in his bed, in brand new clothes and a big smile on his face. I wasn’t sure he’d remember us considering the trance-like state he was in last time we saw him. But a teenage boy in the bed next to him told us he had been talking about us all morning and had been checking the clock constantly. The day before we had told him we would be in to see him around 3:00 when we were done with school. We gave him hugs and took pictures with him. He played with my camera a little bit and ended taking a picture of his legs. We stayed with him as long as we could, but we had to leave and be home for dinner. The teenage boy translated for us and we told him he was going to get the help he needed and he was safe now. He waved good bye with a smile on his face and Natalie and I left the hospital.

I have no idea what’s going to happen to him. But I will continue to pray for him and hope everything works out. I know I can not save everyone and I will not be naive in thinking I can do this again. But I am happy I had this opportunity to help.

I could go on forever about all the things that happened in between but I am out of time on this computer. I love you all and I know I am suppose to be here. I will blog again soon. I have so many stories to tell about my wonderful students and the improvement Richard is making in tutoring. I’m so happy to be here and I hope you all are well.