Yesterday, while distributing blankets to the homeless in Nyala, Amani noticed a man in terrible suffering.
Several months earlier, he’d been hit by a motorcycle and had taken a pretty nasty wound to his shin. Living on the street, he didn’t have any money to afford a visit the doctor. So instead of healing, his wound festered and deteriorated. Now, he was in a lot of pain. He was having a hard time getting by before the accident, but now he could neither look for work nor actually do work.
We were worried about the prognosis for his leg, so we got him in to the doctor in Nyala the same day. He would be able to keep his leg, but he needed a surgery immediately.
We gave the doctor the go-ahead, and the surgery was scheduled for the very next morning.
But that was just the first hurdle. Loved ones are required to feed and care for their loved ones while they’re in the hospital – there is no staff on-call to provide that service. Our friend would be in the hospital recovering for the better part of a week, and our team was too busy with their work to be able to sit with the patient.
“I’ll be with him like a tree,” Ahmed, Amani’s husband volunteered. Ahmed was available to help for the next several days. So we gave Ahmed a small stipend to buy the man the meals and incidentals he would need while he recovered.
It wasn’t a project we went looking for. But that’s one of the beautiful things about Changemakers 365 – we can see something that needs doing and ACT immediately. What different prospects our patient will have now with a healthy, functioning leg!
