This is the story of a girl named Rosemila. I must warn you, it is not a particularly happy story. But it needs to be told. She needs me to tell it. I must also warn you that there is no nice, polished resolution waiting for you at the end of it. All I can do is recount to you the events as I experienced them, and where these events have left me. Because this story is still being written.
I first met Rosemila last spring, during the last week of a two-month humanitarian trip to Haiti. Maula, the pastor who had hosted our
team in the city of Gonaives, had arranged for us to visit the local hospital and spend time with its patients. To call it a hospital is a bit of a stretch. It was in fact, a huge, empty warehouse in which seven rooms or so had been partitioned and packed with hospital beds. It was staffed by a total of 8 nurses and 1 doctor who worked around the clock to treat the constant influx of patients—without an operating room or even basic sterilizing equipment. I made my way through the crowded hospital rooms, stopping at every other bed to make conversation as best I could in my limited Creole.
And that is where I met her. Her young mother (surely no older than myself) told me she was two years old, though she couldn’t have weighed more than 25 pounds. Her big brown eyes stared up at me weakly, her hair turned orange with malnutrition was matted and sweaty and a large IV stuck out of her tiny arm. I tried to engage her in conversation but though her tiny lips moved, she seemed unable to utter any sound. Her mother and I talked for awhile, and I discovered that Rosemila suffered from the same illness as most of her peers: anemia. An iron deficiency. I knew of several people in the US with anemia and they certainly hadn’t died from it, so I thought this young girl was likely already on the road to recovery. I talked with her mother a few minutes more, assuring her that her daughter would be fine, and then kissed the little girl on her forehead and continued on through the hospital.
Not 45 minutes later, as I was talking to a young man with a broken leg, some women ran up to me, yelling in Creole two words that I hoped beyond hope I was misunderstanding: piti mor. Child dead. Dead. They motioned for me to follow them back to the children’s room, and I did so in a daze. They led me to a hospital bed where a sheet amply covered a tiny lump. I found myself pulling back the sheet to see those beautiful big brown eyes still open, staring off at something I could not see. And it hit me that this child, this gorgeous little girl was dead. She had been alive, I had talked to her, and now she was dead. The women who had come to get me looked at me expectantly—after all, I was the great, white humanitarian! But all I could do was cry. I picked up Rosemila’s wailing sister, and joined their young mother on the bed, and our tears flowed together. I drew a small crowd of Haitians waiting to see what I would do. Perhaps they hoped I might pray the young girl back to life. But my faith which had been so strong just moments before was gone. My soul cried out in grief to a god I could not believe in as I looked at the limp, empty body of the child whose life had been cut short.
This is her story. But it is far from over. It is up to us to decide the ending.
If we let this go, then Rosemila will become just another number. But if we let her break our hearts, then her death can be redeemed and many can be saved. I have committed to this.
Will you join me?
The Rosemila Project 