Failure to thrive

I suppose it was inevitable. Sharifo’s baby died, after a year of barely staying alive. The baby underwent three surgeries for a congenital heart defect, and then spent most of his life in the neonatal critical care unit at Children’s Hospital. In the first ten months of his life, the baby had the best medical care available, yet failed to thrive.

When I first met Sharifo a few weeks ago, she told me about her "American baby," the son who had been born in the United States. I commented that she knew a lot of English for someone who hadn't taken classes, and she let me know that she had learned much of her English in the hospital. How foreign that hospital must have seemed to her with its bright lights, incubators, machines and alarms. Sharifo herself is Somali Bantu , a group that had little exposure or access to technology before relocating to the United States.

On that late afternoon, sitting in Sharifo’s cluttered living room a few weeks ago, I noticed an African straw mat placed under the circa 1975 coffee table, the torn window screen, sheets covering the windows and sofas, and a small hospital crib in the corner. Next to the crib there was an IV stand with digital controls; two green oxygen canisters had been haphazardly shoved under a chair. Sharifo knew how to change the IV, how to change the dressings on her son’s surgical incisions, and how to swap out the oxygen bottles. She was a long, long way from a mud hut in an impossibly dusty refugee camp in Kenya.

Sharifo told me that her son often needed to be rushed to the hospital when his condition became unstable. Despite the fact that she has three other children, Sharifo spent night after night at her son’s side. She had hope. The very nature of the hospital, the technology, and the doctors and nurses who doggedly worked to keep the baby alive all gave Sharifo the impression that her son would undoubtedly survive and live to be a healthy child.

The reality is that had Sharifo’s son been born in either the Dadaab or Kakuma refugee camps—Sharifo’s home prior to living in the States—the baby would have died within days of being born. Sharifo knew that, and while seeing the centuries of difference in the kind of care available, she had no reason to believe that this baby, the one born in the US, would not respond to the doctors, the technology, and the vast sums of money being focused on her son.

What must it be like to believe you are functioning within a world of hope and possibility, to think that you have no reason to doubt these educated people and their technology, only to find out that the outcome, although protracted, is no different than it would have been on a dusty plain in Kenya? I cannot fathom the depth of Sharifo’s sense of loss, her grief, and her profound disappointment in a situation that showed such promise.

Sharifo is not alone. The Bantu community has rallied around her, filling her house with love, support, and comfort. In Bantu culture, there are no visiting hours; community members come and they stay in the house for days, physically filling the space so the grief can be absorbed among many, and not allowed to grow to fill the empty places of a quiet house.

Sharifo and her family have no money. Sharifo was never able to work because she had small children and then the son who was so sick. Her husband works, but doesn’t really make enough to support the family. They live in public housing and make the most of what little public assistance they receive. Who will pay for the funeral? Where will the baby be buried? Do Sharifo and her husband understand the death practices that are the cultural norm in this country?

It breaks my heart to know that Sharifo—so focused, so tired, and so hopeful about her son—has suffered this loss. I know that the other Bantu families will do what they can to soothe her grief. Still, how do you move on after you’ve lost your home, your homeland, a big piece of your culture, and then the most precious thing of all, the child who you had hoped would be the start of your family’s second generation—a new life within your new life?

I cannot imagine.

Bliss

Refugee kids are amazing. They come here with their parents after living in dangerous and often squalid conditions, and then, without missing a beat, they thrive. Their parents struggle with the cultural and lifestyle adjustments, but the kids hit the ground running.

Yesterday I had an appointment to meet with a Somali Bantu woman who had requested help learning English. The volunteer tutor and I arrived at about 5:30 only to find that Sharifo, the student, wasn’t home.

Sharifo and her family live in the projects. I suppose the politically correct term is “public housing,” but that’s just semantics. The complex is a sprawling maze of brick-front, two-story units, ten homes to a block. There used to be grass on the front lawn, but it has, for the most part, given up its struggle to grow. Too many feet stray from the sidewalk, and too many children run across the dusty patches of gravelly soil.

While the volunteer and I stood at Sharifo’s door, children playing on the swing set next door stared at us. Eventually, three Somali kids—all under the age of ten—came over to investigate.

“He’s not home,” a waif-thin girl of about declared. “He’s not here now.”

I told her I was looking for a “she,” for Sharifo. A boy of about six piped up, “Maybe she’s, um, she’s down there.” He pointed down the impossibly long row of identical units. He may have been indicating that Sharifo was on the next block, but he couldn’t remember which house he was talking about. He tilted his head and rolled his eyes back. His eyes came forward again, but his lids remained at half-mast. “Buddy,” I said, “You look drunk.”

The tutor laughed nervously, and the boy grabbed her hand and pulled himself against her. “Why are you here?” he asked her.

“I’m here to help Sharifo learn English, but she’s not home.”

The oldest girl leaned across from the front stoop and poked her hand through the torn and disconnected window screen of Sharifo’s front room window. On tiptoes, the girl, Amina, peered in the window and said, “I can’t see anybody. Did you knock?”

By now, we were attracting attention, and at least a half-dozen kids had abandoned the playground area so they could get a closer look at us. I asked the tutor if she wanted to wait for awhile, and she said it was no problem. One of the kids took off to ask her mother if she had information about Sharifo’s whereabouts.

A little girl, who appeared to be about four years old, slid up against me and held my hand. Her hair was haphazardly braided into lumpy cornrows. “What’s your name? I asked. “Binti.” It was almost a whisper. “Binti? I think that means daughter.” She pressed her weight against my side, and then stepped back to stare at us some more.

I looked at the tutor, and another little girl was trying to look through the woman’s purse. She looked at me and said with mild panic, “I’m not sure what to do. I never babysat when I was a teenager.” I laughed. “Watch,” I said. "I know how to get everyone’s attention."

I pulled out my cell phone and flipped it open. I pushed the button for the camera feature and hoped that I could remember how to use it. I took Binti’s picture, and showed it to her. For the next twenty minutes, Jessica and I snapped pictures with our cell phones. We took pictures of kids laughing, dancing, jumping, smiling, posing, being silly, and much to my horror, flashing gang symbols.

Next door, a group of teenagers played with firecrackers. I jumped every time a firecracker snapped on the tired lawn. The kids didn’t care for the noise much, either.

At some point, I gave piggyback rides, held hands and moved in a circle without any recitation of Ring Around the Rosie, and took more pictures. We tickled, we cuddled, we spun. There was a moment, a crystalized moment, when I looked at the kids and realized that they were totally lacking in self-consciousness. They hadn’t yet been made aware that they were poor, that they were immigrants, or that they were living in a very bad neighborhood. For now, they are the embodiment of pure happiness. Bliss. And dirt. Every one of these kids, in their mismatched outfits and sporting bare, callused feet, was filthy. Their clothes looked as if they could never be laundered clean again, and as a group, they looked like the “before” scenario for some kind of extreme Tide commercial. They had no idea, and in the early July heat, it just didn't matter.

The littlest boy’s short-sleeved, plaid shirt was completely unbuttoned and inside out. I told him, but he misunderstood. He took off the shirt and turned it around so the buttons were in the back. I tried to help him, but once his shirt was off completely, he squealed with laughter and refused to let me work his left arm back into the sleeve. I had the advantage of size, and eventually I won the struggle.

The wind picked up and large swirls of dust made us squint and turn toward the building. Fat raindrops started to freckle the sidewalk, and I decided we had waited for Sharifo long enough. She has a critically ill infant, and I assumed she was once again spending the evening at Children’s Hospital.

Just as Jessica and I started to walk away—amid loud protests from our new friends—a chubby Mexican girl (the bossiest of the bunch) ran over to us, out of breath from the effort. “They’re here! They’re home! Look!” She pointed toward the back of the building where a white mini-van was surrounded by very small children. A tiny girl wearing a dark hijab was struggling with a jumbo-pack of paper towels. Another boy, barely out of the toddler stage, was carrying a 24-pack of ramen noodles. Sharifo had apparently been made aware of our presence, and she came around the side of the building to see what we wanted.

I introduced myself and reminded her we had spoken on the phone—about English. She looked exhausted, but in a flash her demeanor went from all business to delight. “Ooooo. Yes, my teacher! Come in, come in!”

As we entered the front door, our audience of pintsize onlookers gathered at the window to see what we were up to. Necks craned, teetering off the concrete platform at the front step, it turned out nobody was tall enough to see through that tattered window screen after all.

I wrote earlier that I don’t have kids, but while I waited for Sharifo, I was able to connect—if only for an hour—with the Somali kids and with the part of myself that remembered how to be silly, how to spin, and how to enjoy just playing on the dirt-mottled lawn without even considering what anybody thought about me. What a relief.

It was fun.