Off to See Ahmadu

We visited Ahmadu on Thursday. He'd been into the paediatric clinic just the day before, and there had been a commotion over whether or not he was on course with his anti-HIV drugs. So we paid his family a visit to see for ourselves. Stephanie drove us less than ten minutes into the Muslim part of town – the wrong way down a one-way street – and we parked outside a shop. The remaining trek was along a dirt path beside a stream. There were women knee-high in the water, scooping sand from the bottom to sell. Nearby was a group of women making mud bricks. I baaed at the goats we passed, and the children watching us laughed.

“You can hear his grandmother's grinder from here,” Stephanie pointed out as we came within a few hundred meters of the house. I averted my eyes as we walked past a group of men seated outside a house. We turned a corner, and there was a young woman with Ahmadu on her hip.

“Sannu! Sannu!” she greeted us and welcomed us into her tiny home. There was just enough couch space for the five of us visitors, so the rest of the household sat on the table against the far wall, and Ahmadu and his grandmother sat on the floor. Stephanie was delighted to see Ahmadu looking so well. To me he looked thin and wasted, but to her he looked like someone brought back from the dead.

“You should have seen him a few months ago,” Susan said later. “He was just skin and bones, too weak to suck or sit up or grab things. It's a miracle what God has done for this little boy.”

Ahmadu is 15 months old and fighting HIV. His grandmother cares for him, feeds him and makes sure he gets his medication. Whenever Ahmadu wasn't in his grandmother's arms, he began to cry. But he sat on the floor without falling over. When the grandmother placed a container of kwashpap* powder near him, he grabbed at it and tried to get a handful of powder. We laughed.

Stephanie confirmed that Ahmadu was taking his medications faithfully after all, and she left him some paracetamol for the lingering fever from his malaria. We snapped some photos, prayed for the child and his family, and left – all within 15 minutes. We left with optimism about little Ahmadu and his future. He may look scrawny and sick, but this baby is growing and getting well. Let us hope the best for little Ahmadu.

*Kwashpap is a nutritional porridge given to malnourished children.