Crazy orphaned baby weekend

First we went to check out a couple of little four-week old rescue pups. We’re thinking about dogs again; some friends’ place was robbed while they were out of town, so we’re upping our security measures a little.

Dogs are part of the security apparatus here, so there are lots of great big dogs that are just fed, kept kenneled or tied during the day, and expected to be alarm barkers at night. One of the hazards of being an outside alarm dog is poisoned meat that burglers throw over the compound walls.

There are no dog trainers in Lilongwe, though, and Annie, I’m serious, you would make a good living even just training basic “don’t jump on me; come when I call you; I know you’re happy, but don’t chew on me” commands. Really. We’ve talked to people about getting a group together to pay for your ticket here in exchange for some dog lessons. TiVo-ed copies of “The Dog Whisperer” get passed around here. Of course, unless you had more than two weeks to spend here, that would mean coming all the way to Malawi and then spending your time with out of control dogs. (What do you think? Wanna try?)

There’s a surprisingly active SPCA in Lilongwe, and with so many expats coming and going after short stays (shorter than the length of a dog’s life, anyway), I’m glad there’s some kind of organisation taking care of animals too. But it’s also just another one of those weird things about being in a developing country. On the one hand, its odd to see these muzungus (white foreigner) give food and protection and a place to live and care from the vet to these animals when there are children and other humans who don’t have that. On the other hand, you can’t have a place where people are taken care of and animals aren’t. Even though we value animal life lower than human life (ok, a whole ’nother bone to pick and chew together), you can’t isolate taking care of the one from the other. Certainly not when it comes to food, but even in the sense of developing a respectful, caring civilisation. (Is that what we have in the US?)

The pups were tiny, sweet, scabby on their heads where they'd been abused, and had little black muzzles. After hanging out with them for almost 40 minutes, the little girl warmed up enough to come play with my hand, chewed and flipped on her back, chewed and flipped, chewed and flipped. I had told Scout we were going to see some puppies, but she fell asleep in the hot car on the way, so I let the babes sleep on.

***

Later in the evening, one of Andy’s colleauges was having “a braai”—South African for a BBQ. A visiting NICU nurse had brought a tiny little girl to the party. Three months, orphaned, and poignantly, negative. The nurse had been volunteering at the Crisis Nursery when they got a call from a village an hour away about this baby. There was no formula, the dad couldn’t take care of it. The nurse had Zuone, the baby, at her home for the weekend, had a little tiny bottle to feed her, had made a bed for her in a basket on the floor (“I felt so weird putting her on the floor, and then I was like, ‘Oh yeah, she’s been sleeping on a dirt floor under a grass roof with goats until now’”) but ended up putting her in bed beside her. It's hard to resist sleeping in bed with a baby.

Orphan can be a misleading word here. Orphan can mean that the baby has no living immediate family members. Or it can mean that just the parents are dead. Or it can mean that just the mother is dead. Kids stay at the Crisis Nursery until they are weaned, about six months, and can then be sent back to their father or grandmother, who wasn’t able to come up with formula for them. Seems like most muzungu families that live here any length of time wind up adding a little Malawian baby to their family tree, and most often that little twig comes from the Crisis Nursery.

Adoption is not an easy process here though (“unless you’re Madonna,” is the required qualifier), and I’m pretty sure to adopt you have to live in the country for 18 months. That’s what everyone has said. Yes, I’ve looked into it.

Zuone is like something miniature. She maybe weighs six pounds, like a newborn, but she’s interactive and interested like a three-month-old. Her beautiful little head is fuzzy, and her eyes are huge and bright and like to look at faces. Her tiny fingers grip around your finger, and someone has already started training this baby to ride a woman’s back, because her legs instinctively spread and cling. She’s really really pretty and everybody wants to hold her. One woman whips out a massive-lense camera and starts snapping pictures with a flash in her face.

And that’s when my mama bear, who has been curled inwards snuffling the hairy offspring of my own belly, catches wind of something off. She rears on two legs. It is SHE, I, who should be holding this child. This baby needs a protector, and it should be me. Mama Bear is genuinely distressed. Sure, there’s a bunch of pediatricians at this party but who’s the one keeping the flash out of this baby’s face? Saying, “No, that’s enough passing around for now.” Telling all the good-intentioned women (who are maybe feeling a bit territorial as I am? Surely not.) to stop jiggling her so much, babies are ok just sitting still too. I have this biblical yearning to draw her to my bosom and nurse her. This baby doesn’t need a bunch of well-intentioned, muzungu professionals. She needs a mama bear.

***

Saturday Andy arranged to have a little premature baby moved from Kamuzu hospital to ABC Clinic, a privately run missionary clinic on the outskirts of town. There’s surprisingly little coordination between the different medical efforts here in Lilongwe.

His mother died a day or two after he was born, of some kind of cancer, but little tiny one-kilo Dickens, born at 28 weeks, made it somehow, ten days in the village before his grandmother brought him in to the clinic. He’s negative, but of course, HIV would have been the least of his challenges right now. I’ve asked Andy why go to great lengths for this one? There are relatively a lot of resources being devoted to this child. Not only that, but there’s a black-hole part of me (it’s gotten kind of bigger since we arrived here) that occasionally tries to suck the life out of living, that asks, “wouldn’t it just be better to let the kid die?” His prediction: Dickens will still die, despite going the the little building with warming beds and nurses, called the NICU. And also, “But this kid’s a fighter. He made it ten days in the village, so you’ve got to try, right?”

Dickens has no one but a grandmother who can’t care for him. We’re debating bringing him home to our house, if he does live. I’m not sure how long he can stay in the NICU at ABC. Andy warns of two things if we bring him home: 1. He would require full time care; we’d basically have to hire two people to take care of him. 2. He may still die anyway, and we would be attached, and we’d have to explain it to Scout. (Scout is already learning about death; it started this spring with bugs, and continued this summer with her great grandmother. She sort of gets it, sort of doesn’t. She told me yesterday, “I’m dead. Look, my legs aren’t moving. I died.” This after stomping on an expiring locust whose legs were still twitching.)

For now, tiny, delicate Dickens remains at ABC. Wide-eyed little Zuone is at the Crisis Nursery. Word from the SPCA lady is that those two tiny puppies have been deemed well enough to be vaccinated; things are ok right now for the orphaned babies in our lives.

***update***

Dickens is still alive, and looks like maybe his family will be interested in taking him back when he’s weaned after all.

The Lilongwe SPCA has had a devastating blow: two of the puppies they adopted out last week have rabies. Had rabies when they adopted them out. Andy made me make some frantic phone calls to find out about the ones that were mouthing me. Looks like I'm safe, but I doubt those canine babies will be coming home here.

***more update***

So, candor isn't always the best policy, see? So I've changed some names and deleted stuff and hopefully made this a less critical post.

Also, I forgot to point this out: check out the way Finn and I are doing the same wierd thing with our mouths in the picture. Awww!