Sad Times...

I wanted to put a little prologue ahead of these three forthcoming blogs, both to give them a little context and also to explain my motivation for writing them. As most of you who know me will already be aware I have set up and now run an orphanage in Madagascar and, because of both my personality and the intimate nature of the project, the children here have become like family to me and I love them all dearly. I know this is a concept some people cannot understand- that children with whom I have no relation and that I know only through work can actually become so dear to me. I can’t explain it and feel no need to justify it other than to say that my entire life in a country which is not my own, revolves around these children who do not have anyone of their own and who rely on the staff in this house as though we were their kin. The kids know me. They respond to my presence and they fill a hole in my life where all the people I have left behind to take on this project once were in my day to day existence.

Last week I lost one of these children very suddenly. This blog is a kind of free therapy I guess. After a week that passed in a blur of tears I never want to forget this experience, which will undoubtedly change me forever. Sadly, it is not the first time I have had to deal with the death of a child through my work. While volunteering ta an orphanage for HIV+ children in Cambodia I lost 5 wonderful, beautiful, inspirational children to the disease. I never wrote about what it was like then, to deal with death in such a physical way. In our culture the aftermath of death is hidden from us by professionals and servicemen who ensure that the brutal, physical aspects of dealing with the dead are hidden from the fragile and vulnerable family and friends. Many of us never even see a dead body let alone touch one and we certainly don’t dwell on the mechanics behind death.

In other cultures though, this is not so. The body is not feared and the family participate in all aspects of death. It can be gruesome and painful and cruel but it can also be cathartic and healing and help you to come to terms with what has happened. In Cambodia I carried the body of a child to a pagoda in a taxi and then stood in the courtyard and watched as he burned before my eyes. I was unprepared and I remember feeling dirty and disrespectful at the banality of it all. With the following 4 deaths in the orphanage I said goodbye in my own way but was not physically present for the cremations. Last week has made me reflect deeply on my experiences with death. I was forced to share a close proximity and a practical attachment to the body of my Generick, which some people may find uncomfortable and strange. This blog has not been written for shock-factor or designed to distress anyone and it isn’t meant to inspire pity for me, or judgement on the Malagasy customs related to death. It is only meant for me as a record of my experiences and a self reflection on how I felt during this time.

DAY 1 –Monday 7^th July 2014

Generick Edwino Joface. 2/5/13- 7/7/14

The cemetery here is oddly peaceful. After the madness and incessant noise that exists where I live, the abandoned silence of this graveside seems tranquil and calm. Sitting in the sunshine here in the quiet on my own I feel grounded and at peace- close to Generick and able to give him the one on one attention which is so rarely an option back at the house. I thought the grave would wrack me with grief- bring me back to a place of guilt and sadness and disbelief but it doesn’t. It allows me the time to breathe, it is becoming like a haven for me where I allow myself time to just sit and be with Genos and not feel guilty about it.

When people talk about death they make it sound so final. As though death is the end of a journey and after that all the activity just stops. And I guess for some people it is like that- if the death is at the end of a long life, or a drawn out illness or brings to an end some kind of status quo. But for us death was just the beginning. It came suddenly and without warning, it interrupted an ambling existence and forced us into unnatural action. It was like waking up in a nightmare that doesn’t have an end where all you want to do is curl up in a ball and close your eyes but death is dragging you back to actions that only serve to remind you of what is no longer there.

On Sunday the 6^th of July 2014 some of the children in my house had a dodgy tummy. By this I mean that a couple of them threw up their rice (not a totally unheard of occurrence with 11 children under 2 living in one home). No-one had a fever and there were no reports of diarrhea and the children were in good spirits and hadn’t lost their thirsts or appetites so we chucked it down to overeating or a mild tummy upset and 6 adults settled down with clear consciences for a trouble free sleep.

On Monday morning there were no new complaints of vomiting and still no diarrhea from the kids rooms, so I packed my work bag and headed into the city to do errands and paperwork for the day. I checked my phone battery, as always, packed up the car and headed off to a busy day. By lunchtime I was knackered having been running round town doing paperwork and errands and after lunch I dropped our volunteer Will off at the prison for his weekly English class. I went into the women’s quarter where I work at 15:00 and collected our students and while I was there the mums who have babies living with us chatted with me and asked for updates on their kids. “Everyone is totally fine.” I replied. Because they were.

At 15:30 I left the prison to do some photocopies for the volunteer and on the way to the shop my phone rang. It was Brian. Generick was sick at the house. He had just done one very bad bowel movement and was lethargic and chilly and wouldn’t drink any water. I put my foot down and headed back to the house where Brian and Sylvie, one of my nannies, were waiting with Generick.

As soon as I saw him I knew something was very wrong. His eyes were fixed and unfocussed and he had gone very pale- even perhaps slightly blue, and he was cold. My stomach dropped and my blood turned to ice in my veins. I slammed my foot down on the accelerator and turned toward the hospital, my hand on the horn and my rickety old Catrell doing 80km/h on African roads. Sylvie caught my eye in the rear-view mirror; “I’m scared” she whispered, “Me too” I replied.

We arrived at the hospital at 16:15 and my social worker, Mme Fara, was there waiting for us. They took Generick into the emergency room and started ferrying lots of medical equipment in to him. They never like me in the room with them so I sat down outside with Sylvie and Brian- relieved to have reached the hospital and waiting for news. Mme Fara came out at 16:25 and looked at me, struggling to find words. I communicate with all my staff in French and we never use English in the house or in the office but I could tell she was trying to speak to me so that only I would understand- “He’s dead” she said.

My ears started ringing and the blood rushed to my head- I felt like I was underwater. She lead me away down the hall and I can’t remember what she said. I kept thinking the doctor was going to come out and say he was sick but he should be fine- I couldn’t hear what Fara was saying. The doctor came out and started talking to me and I didn’t hear anything he said either- I had to ask him if Generick was ok and then he confirmed that he was dead. He had been dead when we got there- there was nothing they could do.

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t get it straight in my head. When I checked in after lunch everyone had been fine. Now it was 16:30 and someone was dead. It didn’t make sense and I couldn’t think straight. I realised everyone was looking at me- I didn’t know why. Brian nudged me and I remembered that I am the boss- the children are my responsibility- they were waiting for me to tell them what to do next. My mind went blank and all I could think of were the 15 children still at home and how quickly Generick had deteriorated and I was filled with terror at the thought that someone else might have the same thing. I called a family friend with a 4x4 and asked her to meet me at the house and I called my ex-land lady and asked if we could stay in town, next to the hospital, for a couple of days.

I don’t remember the drive home and I barely remember telling the staff what had happened but I think one of them fainted and I have a heavily pregnant nanny who I remember being worried about. I must not have given them much time to come to terms with the news however, because I was already piling children, babies, mattresses and staff into the cars by 17:00. The next hour or so is a blur as all 15 children were whisked off to visit the best doctor in Diego. In the background, through the shadows of dusk, Generick was moved to the morgue.

The morgue at the Military Hospital is really just a garage with a concrete plinth in the centre. The cobwebs are so old they look like comedy Halloween decorations and the floor is littered with empty formaldehyde bottles and old catheters and syringes. The breeze blows through the broken windows and whips up the dust while the dead leaves crunch under foot. Generick was to be been placed on a stretcher on the plinth. Someone passed me a towel from the kids’ bags so that I could wipe the dust and rainwater puddles off the stretcher before we put him down. Someone asked me for money for candles and I handed over a 10,000 Ar note (an obscene amount of money here), but for the first time no one argued with me about it and someone, probably a nanny, slipped it out of my hand and disappeared into the darkness.

I stepped out of the garage to see what was happening with the other children but someone had already taken them home to our old house nearby and Brian and Will had gone with them. I must have been gone longer than I thought. Mme Fara was trying to explain to me that Generick needed to be washed but that everyone was afraid and no one wanted to do it. I said I would do it and wandered back into the garage but she gently grasped my arm and said that for me to do it wouldn’t be proper (because I am a woman and I’m not his family). She said that her husband was coming in to do it for us as soon as he found someone to watch her children. They asked for money for soap and someone held out the change from the candles. The candles would burn without pause from now until Wednesday evening when the body went to ground and Generick would not be left alone for a single moment from now until I would be led away from the graveside in two days time.

Someone whispered to me that the bathing of the body was about to begin and that we needed to prepare for the next step. We had brought his best clothes in with us and the women were busy taking off all the buttons and elastic, which could not go into the coffin with him according to local custom. I was sent to the pharmacy where I struggled to explain to the military pharmacist that I wanted a half litre bottle of formaldehyde, two syringes, a catheter and some surgical tape and cotton. I stepped back into the garage and the special nurse who comes to do drips on the really difficult kids was waiting there for me. He struggled to find a vein and I stood there, leaning over Generick, shining my mobile phone light on his arms for the nurse until he nodded at me to stop and those of us who knew Genos were shepherded outside.

Later on someone told me that they had finished the formaldehyde procedure before plugging his nose and ears with cotton wool and re-wrapping the body in the sheet. Fara and I weren’t there for this as we had already left for the prison, where his mum was incarcerated for petty theft. Her son had been dead for over two hours now and she still hadn’t been told. We were allowed in to speak to the guard but they wouldn’t let us talk to Caroline. They instructed us to come back the following day at 6am and speak to her then. We asked permission for her to come with us to see him and say goodbye and the chief guard granted us one-hour sympathy leave the next day.

I dropped Fara back off at the Military Hospital where her husband was waiting with three of my nannies. They would sit vigil with the body all night while I went home to survey the other children carefully for signs of illness.

When I got back most of my staff were waiting for me. They needed me to say something reassuring. Women twice my age with husbands and families, experience and wisdom, were looking to me for comfort. I have never felt so young or so unqualified for the task before me in all my life. I sat on the floor and all of their eyes burned holes in my skin. I told them what the doctor had said- that a violent initiation of a particularly nasty gastro enteritis, which would in the coming days be labelled an epidemic and be all over the news, had sent Generick’s small body into shock and that we had done all we could by bringing him in to hospital immediately and that his death was not their fault. I thanked them for all their work and for helping beyond their shifts and duties and said that whoever wanted to was welcome to stay and sleep with us and some of them started to cry. There was a silence and they seemed to be waiting for more and so, despite my own doubts but knowing their devoutness here, I prayed with them. I felt like I was reading lines out in a play as I thanked God for giving us the time we had had with Generick, for allowing us to know him and love him- I asked that he keep Genos safe now that he was with Him and that He help Generick’s mother have the strength to cope with the mountain of grief I was going to heap upon her the next day. When I was done I felt like a cheater- I felt silly. But the nannies and house staff looked calmer and muttered short prayers in Gasy before announcing the universal ‘Amen’.

At 22:00 I rushed Eugenie into the hospital after a nasty bout of diarrhea and she was admitted for fluids and observation. Meanwhile at the house the bug really took hold in the baby room and we began a long night of sickness and worry, trips to the hospital and minute observation. No one slept that night. I had staff in the hospital, in the morgue and in the house and we all had our eyes on our children non-stop, holding our breaths, until 5am when the sun broke through the darkness and another day began. 

Generick on Mother's Day. Eating cake.

DAY 2- Tuesday 8^th July 2014-07-17

The weight of the day was already heavy upon me by the time dawn gave way to morning. No-one had slept, everyone was exhausted and in shock and the frenzied action of the day before had melted into a stunned silence. The children who had suffered the most during the night seemed to be improving by morning, which we gratefully accepted as a blessing on a day which did not need to be made harder on the team by continued worry for the other children. Even Eugenie at the hospital had improved and was not giving the doctors any particular cause for worry. I was still in my clothes from the day before as I crawled back into the car and headed to the morgue.

Fara and the others were already up when I got there. Candles still burning, they had sat vigil with Genos all through the cold night, huddled together on a wall outside the morgue with the doors thrown open to the night so that he would not feel alone. The duties of the day were divided among the staff with an ease which only comes from numbness of routine. Fara and I left Generick with a nanny and got back into the car.

The prison is only a 5 minute drive from the hospital, but time seemed to stretch and warp as I drove ahead. Having had a whole 13 hours to process what was happening the grief I felt for Generick was being squashed by a black rock in the pit of my stomach, which came from the prospect of the task ahead. When we parked outside the prison Fara and I sat in silence for a while before we managed to heave ourselves out of the car and toward the prison gates. I didn’t need to ask her what she was feeling and she didn’t need to hear me say that the hour ahead would be perhaps the most difficult of our lives. Waiting for Caroline in a private room I would have given everything I had to be someone else, to be somewhere else, and fear leaked into my bones and froze my blood.

How do you tell a woman that her child is dead?

Would I have found it easier if I had been older? More experienced? Trained? Local?

There are no words to soften that blow. How is she expected to understand that in less that 14 hours her beautiful, giggling, chubby 14 month old, who only days before had been trying desperately to take his first steps with her on visiting day, was dead and cold and would never come back to her.

How was I supposed to explain that, having told her that her child would be better off with us, safer in my home than living in the prison, I had then allowed him to die in the back of my car, in the arms of another woman.

She knew as soon as she saw us. I was so worried that shock and grief would mean she struggled to understand the news I was giving her, but I need not have concerned myself with this. She had been called to a private room at 6am, only to find Fara and I waiting for her with exhausted, smileless faces. She knew.

She listened in silence as I went through the events of the day before- I spoke quietly and slowly as Fara translated my words in a subdued whisper- a murmur of foreign sounds relaying my impossible message. As we spoke the guard at the door and a friend who had been allowed into the room with her both began to cry, but not Caroline. Frozen she sat beside me, body motionless beneath my hands, her eyes fixed on the wall ahead. I felt as though my heart would break and hot tears welled up in my eyes but I knew I must not cry- that I shouldn’t infringe on her grief with my guilt and a sadness I felt unentitled to.

In the deafening silence that followed I asked whether she had understood what I had said. She remained motionless and her grief expanded and filled the room. It was suffocating and heavy and awful. Silent tears escaped her eyes and she whispered his name and started to shudder. She was rigid and shaking- and then she stopped and looked at me and asked me to take her to her son.

Genos and him mummy on an early prison visit. 

We waited almost an hour for the guard who was supposed to accompany us to show up to meet us and when she did she blurted something out at Fara and disappeared again. When I asked Fara what she had said I was disgusted to hear that, despite the grief-stricken, sobbing mother in her care, waiting impatiently to be allowed to see her dead son, the guard had popped out for a coffee and rice cake because she had arrived to work late and hadn’t had time for her breakfast. My exhausted body and frazzled mind wanted to follow her down the street screaming. But instead I hung my head and waited.

 By the time we reached the hospital we had managed to track down some of Generick’s father’s family, as Caroline had asked us to, and one of Genos’ uncles joined Caroline to view the body. Up until this point she had been quite subdued but when she saw Generick’s small body all wrapped up she finally lost her composure. I held her up with one of my nannies as her body went limp and heavy. She buried her head in the sheet that covered him and I was worried she might faint. She straightened up just long enough for Fara and the uncle to unwrap Generick’s head and shoulders and reveal his beautiful face. As they uncovered him the wave of formaldehyde hit us- it crawled into your nose and scratched your throat and stung your eyes until it filled the whole room with acidity. But I couldn’t react to it because at that moment the whole extent of Caroline’s grief came pouring over us as she kissed her son’s face and called his name.

I held her up and she leaned on me as she cried and I noticed that most people had walked down the lane away from us- I think her sadness and the sting of the formaldehyde was too much to bear. The people in the room had all started to cry, and even Fara had dropped the professional façade and had turned away, her back heaving with sobs. All the shock and sadness and anger that I had been fighting since Generick died, in order that I might do my part as the director and take care of the rest of the children and the staff, suddenly became too much for me and I started to cry. I tried to be quiet, not to allow Caroline to be offended by my tears, but instead she noticed I was crying and turned her body toward me and slipped her arms around me till she was hugging me back. Her empathy toward me only made me feel worse and I struggled to regain my composure so that we could both kiss Generick goodbye for the last time and wrap him up again.

Tuesdays are Fady in Madagascar. Things that are ‘fady’ are forbidden, unlucky or cursed. Tuesday is a bad luck day here and there was no question of burying my beautiful boy on a Tuesday. It would have marred the celebrations of his life and been offensive and disrespectful to all the people who knew and loved him and the culture in which I live. Having said that, we had already spent almost 16 hours occupying the only ‘morgue’ room in the hospital and we were under pressure to vacate the room. And so, with the prison guard making stupid jokes and laughing, the uncle looking uncomfortable and Caroline crying we laid Generick’s body across them in the back of the car and drove back to the old address of the orphanage, where Genos had spent many happy months growing into a wonderful young boy.

When we arrived everyone melted out of the garden and gave us room- I had phoned ahead to let them know we were coming. The uncle passed me Generick’s body and I carried him into the Garage and laid him down on a reed mat and covered him with a blanket that his mother had brought.

Caroline and her son. Photos were taken at the express request of Caroline- it felt really awkward to me but how could I deny her anything at this point. 

Over the next hour I sat on the floor next to Caroline and held her as she cried. She had chosen, to all of our surprise, to have him buried in Antanamitarana- the village where we have built our new house. She said she had no family here and that she wanted him to be near us. I wonder if she knows how much that meant to me and my staff, who were all beaten down with guilt and shame.

The guard took Caroline home and then the people began to arrive. I was dazed and tired and overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who came to pay their respects to Generick and to me and my staff. Countless members of Generick’s Father’s family came- people I had never seen or heard of while Genos had been alive, as well as the entire staff from the Ministry of Population offices, UNICEF, the Antanamitarana Mayor and social work team, my friends- who brought flowers from their gardens and fussed around me. I greeted officials, diplomats and neighbours and answered the same questions over and over.

In between the people and the questions and the grief there was a lot of planning and work. We had to prepare paperwork relating to the death and organise teams of workmen to dig the grave and get a coffin made and feed the people sitting vigil (which was by this time more than a dozen) and preparing the refreshments and ceremonial offerings for those who would sit with him through the night.

By the time night came I was in a complete daze. I don’t even remember going to the restaurant with Brian and Will. All I know is that I hadn’t eaten since the day before at lunchtime and the cheese on the pizza was choking me. We bumped into people we know and I had to say hello and suddenly the normalcy of the dinner was in such juxtaposition to the pain in my chest that I had to leave and go home.

By this time most of the other children were feeling better but Melodie had been refusing to eat since the sickness began. I took her out for an omelette in the hope that she would be distracted by the outing and eat something, but she wasn’t fooled and I wasn’t in a position to cajole her. Sitting with her alone in the gargotte calmed me though and Brian, Will and I arrived home at the same time.

All day I had been trying to play the boss, the hostess, the coordinator and people swam in and out of my field of vision. But that night, oblivious to the family members and nannies sitting vigil I lay down on the ground next to Generick’s tiny body and I cried big wracking sobs which hurt my soul. Brian brought me a sheet and a pillow and I fell asleep with one hand on Generick’s arm and tears cascading down my face. For that one hour- although there were perhaps 8 people watching, I was alone with Generick and I was releasing all that I had been unable to throughout the day.

I woke up on the cold garage floor and looked around at those still sitting vigil. I left them to their coffee, rum and card games and drifted back into the house. I sat for a while in the baby room and watched their little tummies rise and fall as they slept- all totally fine now, and all oblivious to the sadness of the day. They snuffled and fidgeted in their sleep and as they did I felt calmer and stronger and when I finally joined Brian and Will on the mattresses in the office I knew I would be able to face anything the next day had to throw at me. I was determined to give Generick a respectful and appropriate send off and I would not distract from his memory with my selfishness and ego.

An activity i did with him for Mother's Day.