A new "good son" for our centre

The people who are used to reading the blog everyday may remember that on Friday the 10^th of June I have written the story of a young mentally disabled child, whom brother Robert and Sr. Cecilia have visited in a very poor homestead of Karama.

I have told you that the mother of the child abandoned him, and he was living with the grandmother.

I don’t repeat what I have already written about the terrible conditions the child was kept in. the reason of writing again today is to inform the readers of the blog that we have kept our promise: actually yesterday the boy has come, escorted by the grandmother and two neighbours.

The name of the new “good son” is Otieno. As you can see from the photo, he is quite small, but the grandmother does not know the age.

Otieno came very dirty and in extremely tattered clothes and that has been for us another indication of the miserable condition of that family. But today he is smart and clean after a very good shower. Unfortunately he has two bed sores caused partially by his extremely wasted condition and partially by the fact that he was normally abandoned in his own urine for so many hours a day. But we hope that with good nutrition and thorough nursing care, the ulcers will close soon. It is our plan also to start him on physiotherapy in order to release a bit the extreme spasticity of the lower limbs.

A problem we had to face immediately yesterday was to find a wheelchair for him: in fact he is quite small but he could not fit in a pram we use for the orphans; on the other hand, the wheelchairs of the centre were all too big.

But Divine Providence has come to our help in an extremely timely way as usual. Among the material sent through the last container we have actually found a nearly new wheelchair which is perfectly fitting the body size of Otieno. Also for that coincidence we want to thank God and the donors so much.

Welcome in our family, dear Otieno.

Br Giuseppe Gaido

PS: I wish to take this opportunity to greet and thank all the English speaking readers of the blog who are following us daily from many different Countries… above all Kenya, USA, UK, but also Germany and Poland.

I will try to keep writing in English at least once a week on Sunday.