flesh wound

Knock. Knock. Knock.
I knew it was Abraham.

"Megan! Bandage!"
"Who are you?"
"Abraham."
"Where do you need it?"
"Musa!" (one of the other boys)

I walk out of the door with a band-aid and some neosporin.
Abraham quickly corrects me, "MEGAN! It is BIG!"

"Well, crap." I think to myself. I grab a bigger band-aid and skip on over to the boy's dorm where Musa is located. No real rush. The second the dorm is in my sight I realize the situation is a little larger then I was expecting. Almost all the boys were gathered around Musa and he was bawling. (Kenyan's don't cry in public.) I see the gash in his forehead. It is huge and deep.

I grab his hand and tell him to come to my house... this band-aid is not going to cut it. I luckily have gauze and advil on hand. I hook him up with both. I patch up his head the best I can do and inform the staff that he needs to go to the hospital.

This is so Kenyan... We had to wait for the driver to finish eating lunch first before they were willing to ask him to take us to the hospital.

Also during almost this whole time Kaleigh is in the shower.

Innos, Musa and I get into the van and a bunch of random people jump in the van too just to go for the ride. We are off. Kaleigh stays back. We get to the hospital like 5 minutes later. Musa is checked in and they tell us that the doctor is on a lunch break and we will have to wait. Luckily the lunch break only had 3 more minutes to it.

We are called into the room. Innos and Musa explain the situation to the doctor. The doctor tells Musa to jump up on the table and lay down. The doctor takes off the bandage that I applied and his forehead gushes out blood. It is flowing everywhere... even making a puddle in his ear.

As a preface to the story: Kenyan doctors are ruthless and they live by the motto, "man up."

The doctor first squirts some isha all over and into the cut. Musa HATED this. He was crying hard and squirming all over the place. I got put in charge of holding down his feet and Innos got his arms.

The next step was to numb the area with a shot. Musa saw the needle and FREAKED out. His blood splashed on the wall and got everywhere. He did not want this to happen. We had to hold him down. My heart hurt so much for him. They started the shot. They had to put in a lot of places to make sure the whole area was numb. It hurt him. There was this one area that obviously hurt the most. He was screaming that it hurt. My heart was screaming for them to stop.

Eventually that is what happened. They stopped. They numbed everywhere they needed to.

Next was the stitches. I have no idea how many were put into his head. I am guessing 6 or 7. Musa said that he couldn't feel too much of the stitches going in. Thank heavens. I could not handle anymore of his pain. He calmed down. They cleaned and bandaged him up. He sat up and the back of his shirt was covered in blood. I brought a blanket. I took off his shirt and wrapped him in the blanket. The doctor told us how to take care of him and we were on our way.

Since the manager was not around they were not going to take him to the hospital. The manager pays for everything. It was dire that he got to the hospital. I offered to pay and that is how we got there. It cost 2100/= for everything. It was the best money spent in Kenya thus far. I paid and then I was broken the news that they had to give Musa a tetanus shot too.

"You have to be kidding me," I thought to myself. We are called into the injections room and he is sat down on a car. I uncover his arm. Tell him to close his eyes but it was too late... he already saw the needle. I had to hold him down as they gave him the shot. He started crying again. Poor child.

Enough is enough. We left. It was all over. Musa and I could not handle anymore.

Side note: Innos is a worker at the orphanage. He is really cool. He was there with me and Musa the whole time. The second the doctor would pull out any tool he would just walk away from the situation. He was a baby. This huge Kenyan man cannot handle a little needle that is not even going into his skin. He would close his eyes and try to leave as much as possible. He said that I am super brave. Shoot... someone has to be. Musa can't feel alone.

I wish you all knew Musa's character. You would all LOVE him. Musa is one of the happiest kids on the planet. He makes Kaleigh run for her money with taking nasty pictures. He giggles constantly. He is just so great to be around all the time. It was seriously so hard to see him so hurt and broken down.

It took him about 20 minutes of laying in his bed in the dorm before he was just as happy as ever and back to normal. That is all I could have asked for. He is a rock star.