Abu

I was right. Today was even better.

At prayer time today, one of the missionaries showed up with this little sugar.

This 6 pound bundle of sweetness is over 2 months old. Pregnant, his young mother left home with no word of where she was going.  Her mother claims to have searched for her daughter for months. Finally, a couple of months ago she received a phone call from a hospital: her daughter was there. She had delivered a baby boy and she was dying.  The mother,confused, tried to explain to them that her daughter was not even pregnant. Finally, they convinced her and she came down to the hospital in time to touch her daughter's unconscious face before she died.
Grieved, she took baby Abu and went home.  With no milk and no money to buy milk, she fed the baby tea for two months. When she saw Abu's skin sagging and the ridges of his bones protruding through his scalp, she consulted the Susu witch doctor for help.  He gave her "medicine" that began to destroy Abu's little liver.
About three weeks ago the grandmother brought the baby to my friend Esther.  The baby had never had milk and the dehydration was severe.  Esther asked if she could keep the baby with her and feed him milk until he was better.  The first week he gained a pound.  Now he has had milk to drink for three weeks. Those who saw him from the beginning say the change in his appearance is profound.
Esther and the other missionaries all pitch in to help take care of him, and I was beside myself when she offered to let me have my turn at caring for him for a couple of days.
He arrived dressed only in a diaper and a little shirt that his grandmother had made. It didn't fit and hung open in the front. His wrinkled little body couldn't stay in the pair of baby doll pants someone had tried to put on him.    I showed the baby to Curlygirl. She rummaged through her doll clothes and found one of Little Aggie's old onesies she uses to dress her baby dolls.  It fit Abu perfectly.
All the boy needs now is a little milk moustache and he can be the poster child for
"Milk, it does a body good."

Want to know the crazy thing? Abu is the 9th baby to show up in desperate arms to Esther this week. And he is #253 of all the babies she is currently feeding. Every one of them lost their mother. Every one of them without milk.  It's just overwhelming.  I want to help her feed every starving, orphaned baby in Africa. But, that's not really possible, is it?
Maybe not, but I CAN feed this one <3