A Little Bridge

She said she was 17, but I would have guessed about twenty five. She was terribly thin but very pretty, her worn blouse, held together with a large safety pin, continually moved up and down as the small child half asleep in her arms sucked intermittently as we listened to the sermon. I had noticed her many times before in church, and wondered how I might be able to have an opening to talk to her.


After the service, when I saw her motion for the pastor to come and pray for her child, I took my chance to ask her what was wrong with her little girl and offer any help I could. Her child, she told me, had been vomiting and with diarrhoea for six days. Although she had been to the local hospital three days before, borrowing the US$15 that it had cost to have her treated with a a saline drip and an injection, she seemed no better than before.


Horrid thoughts crossed my mind. The little girl was 15 months old, but so thin that we estimated her weight to be about 4kg. She lay, almost lifeless in her mother's arms. All the stats I had read on infant deaths from preventable diseases pounded my head like a sledge hammer. Was this child dying? And what could we do to avoid the loss of this precious life.


Trying to recall all the intelligent question gathering techniques I had learnt in my crash medical course only months before, i gathered as much information as I could and called my team doctor in Phnom Penh. She took an informed guess, and sent a list of medications. Less than 30 minutes and US$5 later, we were at home, with a bag of medicines, and multivitamins which we proceeded to force the precious child to swallow, praying all the while that she could keep it down.


After the trauma of administering the medicines, and sure that they knew our house if they had need to return, we left to take them home. And it was then that I began to hear the mother's story.


Orphaned at a very young age, this young Tampouen tribal girl had married at about 13. She seemed to indicate that she had no other option, since she had no one to look after her. It must have been quite soon after that when she became pregnant for her first child because now, at 17, she has three. At about the same time, Cambodian Christians from the town visited the little village where she lived, and shared about Jesus Christ. After many such visits and the teaching of the Bible, the whole village turned to Christ.


Fascinated by her life story, I didn't notice the rough dusty road that we travelled on to reach her home in a village about 10 km out of town. Once here, she enthusiastically led us to the hut she lives in, borrowed from a kind owner. The entire box was not even 2X2 meters, and inside, all her worldly possessions could have been packed into an overnight bag. Her husband, who she told us "ot jeh roek loy" - which literally translated means does not know how to find money - was no where to be seen. The other tribal women of the village, many smoking traditional pipes, together with very dirty and snotty nosed kids, came out to stare at us as we stood, looking up at our new friend and her sick child, standing in the door of their hut.


Then, just as we were getting ready to leave, she stooped inside, and brought out a squash which she handed to me. Thank you she said. I protested that she didn't need to give me anything. I who have so much at my very fingertips, and she who has so little of anything by worldly standards. But she insisted. No - she said, I have another one, and she pointed to the other, in the corner of her hut. Humbled, I took it, with great thankfulness, not sure of what the consequences would be for her, but sure that for her sake, I must take it.


She invited us to visit again, and I promised that I would. And I will.


This Sunday I will see her in church again, and hopefully her precious third baby will be well. And from now on I won't have to think of some way to make contact with her. I want to take that dirty, smelly, malnourished child in my arms, and thank the Lord that he used her to build another bridge for me to reach out to this community into which I have come to serve.