Dada cuts her hand... (Rated R for violence)

Saturday afternoon – just finishing my lunch when my co-worker, M’Liss, calls for me. One of the tribal girls, Dada, has cut her fingers with a machete. Ugh….you have to understand that open bloody wounds and I don’t get along very well. My stomach starts turning and I feel faint. I’ve passed out only once – when they were taking my blood and had to try a couple times. Anyway – I went down to help. None of us missionaries have had any medical training. We’re limited in what we can do as this particular province of PNG doesn’t allow us to do anything yet in terms of shots or disseminating medicine. (Our leadership team has been working with the government authorities to sponsor a training course for national guys that we appoint so that medical work can continue even after we leave. This course starts in February for our folks.) So we start off rather limited in knowledge and options. The nearest aid post is a 5 hour ride in a paddle canoe and because sorcery is always tied into sickness – it’s hard to convince them to get medical care anyway. Ok…so now you know a few background things for the rest of the story.

I go down to our verandah where M’Liss and Dada are. Her middle finger is cut right at the last knuckle – closest to her fingernail. It’s crooked – sort of hanging off to the side – definitely broken. The blood has coagulated around the open cut so at least the blood isn’t running down her arm at this point. I only looked at it for a few minutes before my stomach was twisting. After about 10 minutes, I had to actually sit down – or pass out. So I sat down as M’Liss and I tried to figure out what our best option was. If she removed all of the coagulated blood, then it would start bleeding all over again – and neither of us thought the ten year old girl could handle the pain that would be involved in putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. So we decided to try first pouring an antiseptic solution on it to clean it and see how it went from there – leaving some of the coagulated blood where it was. All I did was hold a bucket under her arm as M’Liss poured the solution over it – with my head turned away – and provide moral support. M’Liss did all the work.

Dada didn’t make a sound – she wasn’t crying – she wasn’t saying a word. She winced plenty of times and tensed her whole body up but other than that, she just sat there. M’Liss got a lot of the blood cleaned off. The finger needed to be straightened – the bone put back in place – a little beyond our skills – and again, pain tolerance comes in there. These folks have high pain tolerance but the kids especially would rather leave a splinter in their foot so that it ends up being a huge sore rather than deal with the small amount of pain it would take to remove that splinter. So here we are – no anesthetic for her – no way to numb her hand and yet we needed to do something. So we finally got the wound clean – wrapped it in a bandage – along with the finger next to it – gave the equivalent of childrens’ Tylenol and put her on an antibiotic. The hard part is to see how her aunt – who now looks out for her as her mother died way back in 2004 from breast cancer – wasn’t concerned for her at all. She said it was ‘Dada’s thing’ and went on by. Most of the adults didn’t care that she almost cut her finger off. Another lady in the village who seems to be ‘the lady’ to care for people when they’re sick is taking care of her. Dada has moved from her aunt’s house to this other lady’s house. We’ll see how she does – they do heal in ways that we don’t. But they’re quick to lose bandages and do all the things that a doctor would tell them not to do – like get it wet – hang her hand down rather than holding it up, etc.

It’s a very different story from the standards we’re used to in the United States. She would have been taken to the emergency room – perhaps had to wait awhile but she would have been in a fairly sterile environment – no flies trying to land on the open wound – minimal chance of infection – Novocain or some other anesthetic – stitches – and a wealth of knowledge between the doctors and nurses in how best to handle it all. Not exactly what she has here in Wabuku. Pray that her finger heals – that it doesn’t get infected and that He will be glorified through this situation in spite of it all. We can’t expect western standards of medical care in a country that can’t provide it – that’s the hard part. We can help but the country as a whole is not equipped to provide the medical care that we take for granted. Yet another way that we could easily compare and condemn their way of life to ours but it isn’t for us to judge. We can help and deal with situations as we are able but we didn’t come to build a hospital and care only for their physical needs – we came to care for their spiritual needs. You obviously can’t only take care of those and ignore the physical needs so it’s a hard balance. We want to do both – to the extent that that’s possible and yet without creating paternalism too. We don’t want them to be totally dependent on the white man.

We’re not the answer to all their problems. He is the ultimate answer. Aside from that spiritual need, we feel we should train them and empower them to care for themselves. That means that when we move out of here, medical care can continue without our presence. That sounds logical and easy – but like so many other things, easy to say and harder to do. Pray for that too – that the Uriay people (all three villages) would take this responsibility as their own – and not just look to us.