What leadership looks like

From a relief team volunteer in Arakan State, Burma

January 15, 2013

Mohammed. He is four years old and weighs four and a half kilos, naked except for a grubby red checked shirt. He and his mother live in a straw hut a few miles from here; a team member spotted how thin he was and scooped them both up to come back to our clinic. I lift him gingerly off the scales, uncertain where to hold him, irrationally afraid I may dislocate his shoulders. We have seen him before, three weeks ago, but he didn’t look this bad then- thin, but alert and full of energy. Today he is listless, running a fever, skin stretched tight around his facial bones, eyes sunk far back into their sockets. He is crying: not the normal “waa” of a hungry baby, but a thin, high pitched shriek, more animal sounding than child, as if he is in pain everywhere. It gives me the shivers. The surface of his eyes is cloudy and ulcerated- a classic sign of vitamin A deficiency. 

We get some sugar solution ready while talking to his mum. She looks at me with weary, flat eyes. Yes- she had some soy powder from the clinic last time- but he started to refuse it, and then wouldn’t even take milk, so she has been giving him water. Just water - for the last fifteen days. I double check this through the interpreter, incredulous that the boy is still alive. Two of us hold his head and syringe the sugar water into his mouth, drop by drop, at times past his clenched teeth. He’s not keen on it, but he does swallow. 

It gives me something to do while I push down a growing sense of grief and anger inside me. I am angry at the injustice of it all, I suppose. Angry because I don’t understand why a child should have got to this state when we drive past rice fields and crops every day; angry because I know the odds are that he won’t survive, and that even if he does his eyesight will be permanently damaged; angry that I cannot do more about his suffering; angry that there is a long debate among our local team about whether to send him to the camp clinic, which is due to close in half an hour. Why does no one seem willing to fight for this child? How many other children like this are out there? 

Eventually he and his mother do get to the clinic - and it is closed. The team’s fears about the mother being stranded for the night were justified; it was me that did not understand. And it is then that something remarkable happens. One of our interpreters takes the woman and her son into his home for the night: he and his wife give her a hot meal, and get up every two hours overnight to help her feed the child. He not only takes her to the clinic the next day, but gives her some of his own money to make sure she can get transport back if needed. 

He apologises with a half smile for being bleary eyed the next morning, and we talk about why he did what he did. “You see, I want to be kind to my people. If I am going to be a leader… I must be willing to help them, even when I am outside of the clinic.” I am - again - both humbled and cheered by him, by his understanding of what leadership and love looks like, by the sparks of generosity and righteousness and courage that we have seen among our friends here. We look for those sparks and welcome them and nurture them, cupping our hands round them, hoping that they will catch light into little flames, hoping that they will spread… hoping that they might one day point to a greater Light.