West Africa Trip Report #5
(Final)
Jesus went through all
the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news
of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds,
he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd. Matt 9:35-36 NIV
These last two days of our visit here in Senegal have been a
wonderful illustration of how this verse is being lived out in our world today.
We’ve had the chance to get an up close and personal view of two partner
ministries that are not only following the example of Jesus in preaching,
teaching and healing but also in truly having compassion for special
communities that are definitely “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a
shepherd.”
One of those is the Inter Senegal Mission that has built the
Bartimaeus Hospital in the city of Thiés. Serving an area of over three
million people, this complete medical center is providing care for both the
spiritually and physically needy. But in addition, it has become the single
point of hope in the entire nation of Senegal for children born with a cleft palete.
As in many African contexts, the typical belief is that such a deformity is the
result of an evil spirit’s curse and often such children are killed at birth or
left to die in the jungle. Those who live on are always a source of deep embarrassment
to the family and live a life of constant personal shame. Talk about harassed and
helpless!
Thanks to the International Smile Foundation, volunteer
doctors and nurses visit Senegal every year to offer totally free surgical
procedures for children with cleft paletes. But to do so, they need a hospital
environment where the foreign medical team can adequately handle the complex
procedures and do so with efficiency so as to treat as many children as
possible. The Bartimaeus Hospital is the ONLY place in the whole country that
the Smile Foundation wants to use for a base of operations.
The day we visited Batimaeus, the evaluation process of cleft
palete children was in process. The hallways were lined with mothers and their children
who had come from every corner of Senegal. Just a glance at the little tykes with their
twisted mouths was enough to bring a tear to the eye. Over three hundred
evaluations were being made of which about forty will be selected for the
special operation to be performed this November when the Smile Foundation team
arrives. As with all patients that come to Bartimaeus, every mother and child
will leave having heard and experienced firsthand the love of Christ through
the caring ISM hospital staff.
Two hours away, Senegal’s capital of Dakar is a city of some
five million people. One-fifth of them live in a huge slum area called Pikine,
just east of the city. I’ve lived in Kinshasa, Zaire, seen the favélas
of Brazil, and visited the slums of New Delhi, but I can say Pikine will rival
any of them in its filth and squalor. Rampant with disease and malnutrition,
the area is also a den of drug addiction and prostitution. 
Smack dab in the center of Pikine is a community center run
by the PM International mission. The vision of a team of Latin Americans, this
outreach has been strategically positioned in order to be available to the
masses of “harassed and helpless” that live in the area. Offering a variety of
health, nutrition, and vocational training services, the PMI team are truly
demonstrating the compassion of Christ in this place.
After entering the tiny reception
area and making our way through the three floors of the cramped center, we are
impressed how these folks have transformed a dirty, old building in the middle
of this slum into a clean, attractive facility. “Every day, in our two little
consultation rooms, we deal with dozens of people who have basic health needs,”
says Jose Rocha Jr, a medical doctor from Brazil. “Meanwhile, upstairs, we
provide nutritional training for mothers with infants as well as vocational classes
in cooking and tailoring for women at risk.”
Two young Senegalese staff show us more of the center, including a
micro-sized church in one room that can probably hold fifteen at maximum. “There
is so much incredible need here in this Pikine area,” Jose continues, “so we
hope soon to build a larger facility nearby.”
Our visit to West Africa is now over, and Anita and I and Kazuo Kinouchi, our colleague from Japan, will be winging our way home. What a privilege it has been to spend this quality time of sharing and encouragement with ministry partners like these. The last verses of Mathew 9 say, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." Without question, these faithful men and women are definitely the workers God has raised up at this particular time for these particular harvest fields.
Under His wings,
Jon
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