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  April
2005
This is a young boy named GoGo. He and his brothers are pictured in the
other picture. He was about 18 months old at the time of this picture. I have
followed GoGo for quite some time since he first began to take a couple steps
and improved to a slow walk, then a waddle. He lives in a one room stick & mud
house about 100 feet from the front door of the clinic.
Every time I drove by their house to get to the clinic, I would find him in
the path waddling around (he didn’t walk) as if he knew where he was going.
Except when his brothers grabbed hold of him, he would just walk right up to the
car, clap his hands, and wave to me. I became quite attached to GoGo and looked
forward to seeing him every clinic day. He was always in a good mood.
I saw him one day at the clinic as a patient. His mother brought him in
because he had stopped eating and because he had a chest cold. I gave him worm
medicine, vitamins, and some cough medicine. I noted on his records that he was
malnourished (that’s why he had such a large gut) but believed he would quickly
regain his health as soon as the worm medicine did its job and the vitamins
kicked in.
Following New Years, I noted that GoGo wasn’t around when we drove by.
When I asked Eden, my nurse about him, she said that he had died the week before
but she didn’t know why. From what I had seen of him before, I was shocked at
his quick demise and grieved to have lost this cheerful, little friend. I saw
his mother and father the following week. My experience with many Haitians is
that they expect the worst to happen, so when it does, it makes the pain more
bearable. None the less, GoGo’s parents were very depressed about his death.
We’ll never know why GoGo died. So many unknowns permeate the lives of the
Haitian people.
Please pray for GoGo’s mother, father, and brothers during this time of
grieving.
  
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