Punks and Liars

It’s official: I’m official.

The first hour of Teen Club is mine, the hour while kids are still arriving and settling into cliques in the waiting room. Woohoo! It’s been awhile since I was in charge of a bunch of teenage girls in our Salt Lake City ward and I forgot how much I love those “punks and liars,” as Andy calls them.

From the scrappiest, dirtiest, quietest non-English speaking boy by himself on the bench, to the smartiest smart-aleck in a hoodie with earbuds in, pretending not to hear me, I love them.

This week they drew each other’s profiles. We snagged some paper from CC’s table (“I don’t go through it very fast because I just let the kids stay on their mother’s lap. Unless they’re really sick, and then I’m like, ‘Ok, I gotta feel that.’”) and taped it up on a couple doors in a dark area of the hall. One kid held the flashlight, one held the pencil and drew, and one tried to stand still and not smile. I asked them to write things they like about themselves and their families inside the profile. I think that mostly got translated to “What do you want to be when you grow up.”

I know I overuse the word “poignant,” both in my own head and on paper here, but I’ll say it once more: those shadowed profiles of beautiful children’s faces, dancing in front of a jittering flashlight: as poignant as all get out.









(I’d love to hear your ideas for art/craft/music/dance ideas to do with these kids for an hour or so…)

Another face at the clinic

(Photo is of the kids meeting TV star of Big Brother Africa at the Christmas talent show during once-monthly Teen Club.)


***FYI, this is another kind of depressing post. We'll try to be better about posting the joyful things in Malawi too.***

Walked in to clinic last week with my beautifully fat baby on my hip, feeling as conspicuous as I would with a fat diamond on my finger. His head was tucked in, miserable with a fever, so we were there for malaria smear #2 of this round of fevers. CC, one of Andy’s colleagues, was in the little phlebotomy room talking to a young woman, probably 14 or so, seated in a chair against the wall. Like most people, her head was mostly shaved, to about half an inch, but she wasn’t wearing any fancy extensions or a wig. Her face was puffy. Her eyes were wary. CC was giving her directions for making sure all her labwork was done. “You’ve met T, right?” she said to Andy, “Non-Hodgkin lymphoma?”

“Yeah, I saw you last week, right?” he says to T. “I think it’s grown since last week,” he says to CC, and to T he asks, “Is your face bigger this week than it was last week?” She nods kind of.

Suddenly I get it.

Andy’s holding Finn while he gets his finger stuck to get blood for his smear, and I step out to make some space in the cramped room. When Finn starts wailing, I go in again, ready to nurse. CC is finishing up. “We’re going to keep on with chemo,” she tells T as she hands her a couple papers to hold onto. “I just hate cancer!” she says looking at me, mock punching T’s cheek as she walks out.

The forced cheerfulness, the casualness undoes me. I walk to the corner with my back to Andy, the visiting resident, T, and pretend I’m arranging things in my bag while I regain composure. “Don’t put your bag on that counter, that’s where they put the blood,” Andy says.

I meet CC in the hall later. “You ok?” she asks. “It’s so crazy. She’s just this normal teenager, and she’s really smart. I can hold it together here pretty well, but sometimes at night I just go home and cry.” (We both are again by now.)

They’ve used a large guage prick to stick Finn, and his little finger won’t stop bleeding, so while Andy goes to look for some tape, I try to hold a cotton ball to his finger and nurse in an empty room.

“Are we going to treat him?” I ask Andy when he comes back in. Even though fever with no other cold symptoms is usually what you need to suspect malaria, Andy’s holding back. “By now he’s only had a fever for 24 hours, and both smears have been negative. And he just doesn’t seem that sick. I think we should keep watching him for a while.” How should sick should he be if he does have malaria? Andy showed me to a room on our way out and told me to peek in. A small girl is quiet on the bed, either sleeping or unconcious, and her mother is sitting beside her. “That’s malaria,” Andy says, “probably.”



***update for Finn’s fans***
Fever broke after four days, no malaria. Yay.