'
Mero' is a term for an older woman here in The Gambia. But the sweetest, smartest, friendliest, littlest 2.5 year old you could ever meet is called
Mero.
Let me tell you about
Mero. When I return from being away, it's
Mero that runs to me. She yells '
Jalika' (my Gambian name) and wraps her arms around my knees.
Mero used to yell '
Jakali' because she couldn't say '
Jalika', but then she
realized she could and despite this, still said
Jakali because it brought her attention---she's definitely not stupid. Now,
Mero calls me '
Binki' which is the term for aunt, since her father is my host brother.
Mero knows that I love her, and so does my family. I try not to treat her differently than the other little ones, but I do. I can't help it. At times, it's like she's not a Gambian child, but an American one. She plays, talks, mimics her mother's actions, laughs, and eats like no other despite her small size (she takes after her mother who is tiny).
The mothers and fathers in my compound are caring of their children (which at times, can be atypical of the other parents in the village). My host family (usually) listens to me when I tell them they need to tell their kids to put on their shoes, clean a wound, or feed them better food. And
Mero's mother is especially attentive to
Mero and to me. She listens.
But just like in America, careful and caring parents are not immune to things they can't control...like freak accidents.
I've always been afraid of dying in a fire or even being severely burned, yet I'm still fascinated by fire. It was to no surprise though that when I arrived in The Gambia and moved to my training village that I saw fire more as a danger rather than a source of life (cooking, warmth in the cold season, etc.) I've seen so many children burned by fire-related accidents here. I never witnessed one first-hand, but saw the burns after a few weeks. They became infected because of improper care, with children wincing with pain, almost cursing their parents and the world for letting it happen to them. Horrible burns when the dark skin is now light and there is pus and blood, but packed with soot and other 'traditional methods' of treating an injury.
Usually such burns occur when a child is playing near the 'kitchen' or a small charcoal burner (where green tea is boil and made into a sugary concoction called
attaya). The kids are being kids---and fall over and sometimes fall straight into the fire or the coals. Hands, legs, chests, butts, and even genital areas are charred.
Some say I have a sixth sense (no, I don't see dead people...thank goodness), but I have these premonitions or thoughts of something that may happen in the future (usually it involves guys I've dated or been dating or situations with friends, etc.) It's just a feeling and sometimes a quick flash of thought that makes me remember that moment as a link to an even in the future.
Last year, with kids bouncing around the fire, either with
attaya cooking or because the cold season settled in, I thought, 'Gosh, I hope one of 'my kids' doesn't fall into the fire. And if they did, I'd be destroyed and what would I do , how would I react, and how would my host family react if one of its children fell into the fire?'
Well, unfortunately, my thought became my reality last week. Little
Mero was bopping around outside the kitchen with her playmates,
Paabi and
Amadou.
Mero's mother had cooked breakfast, and she pour the corn porridge into the humongous, metal food bowl. She placed it outside the kitchen, on the ground to cool. She went into the house to add the sugar and somehow,
Mero fell into the bowl of steaming hot porridge, while her mother stepped into the house for a few mere seconds.
I was in my house, sweeping and preparing my things to leave for a meeting in a village near the river. Then I heard it: the scream. Not the 'I want attention' cry, but a scream that conveys sheer pain.
Mero's mother yelled her daughter's name, and I heard the rush of all of Fatty
Kunda's women's feet running on the hard, compacted dirt.
I ran out, looked at poor
Mero, and ran for cold water. I told one of my host mothers to get a bucket and fill it with cold water and to drop
Mero in it. I didn't even know where the burn was at first. About 2 minutes of her sitting in the bucket, I saw it. Dark skin gone---white flesh exposed on a third of her back. I told them to go my counterpart's house, the Community Health Nurse, but said probably he wasn't there because he was
deworming children at the schools in the area. If he wasn't there, they were to take
Mero to the private clinic in the next village over, when I sometimes work.
As we pulled
Mero out of the water, I saw the worst of it: burns on the inside of her legs, to her butt, and on her
gential area, except the skin was still blistering. I held myself together, as did everyone else, except
Mero's grandmother,
NaLisa. She cried and wailed and everyone told her to stop. The look on
Mero's face rattled every bone in my body. She is not
Mero, I thought. Where did
Mero go? She was in pain.
Mero's mother and I rushed to my counterpart's home, only to find, he had already left.
Issou,
Mero's mom, went ahead to the clinic by foot, while I returned to the compound to get my bike and tried to find
Mero's health card, but didn't find it amongst
Issou's things.
NaLisa came with me (on foot) as
Issou has a month and a half old baby to nurse and couldn't spend 2 hours at the hospital without nursing it.
NaLisa and I waited at the hospital for 2-3 hours.
Mero only flashed a slight smile when I offered her an
icee. My heart broke. Poor
Mero. My clinic co-workers gave
Mero medicine and antibiotics (by way of injection, which 2.5 year-old children already hate when they're well), and they cut the blister sacks open.
NaLisa held
Mero in her lap, as I held
Mero's legs
apart and still. The nurse punctured the blisters with a disposable bladed and dobbed up the liquid with an over-sized cotton ball. As the skin was drained, the skin was pulled away to expose a flesh of white.
As
Mero screamed and I saw the flesh be cut away, I lost my control and started to cry and couldn't stop. The nurse looked at me and said 'You are crying.' and said the same to my host mother in
Mandinka 'She is crying'. The nurse kind of chuckled to my host mother. I could have punched the nurse square in the face, but I was so weak and so drained, still crying, I just didn't care.
NaLisa told the nurse (in
Mandinka), '
Mero is like
Jalika's own child. She hurts too.'
I sent Lisa with
Mero and told her to buy the burn cream the clinic once again didn't have a supply of;
NaLisa had to travel 7 kilometers on the
gele-
gele to purchase it at the pharmacy. And as she left to walk 2 kilometers to my village with
Mero wedged on her front in a strategic way, so as not to irritate the wounds, I positioned myself under a tree on the clinic grounds. And bawled without any notion that there were patients and nurses staring as the
toubab sulked in the shade. They know why...they've experienced the same pain, hurt, distress with their own children or members of their family.
Mero is like my own child. She's in pain. And I know such an event of her falling into the porridge had a high chance of happening one day, yet I couldn't do one thing to prevent it.
