The Story of Bendy...

September 8, 9 and 10, 2010

A Creole Proverb...   “Youn sel je pa je.”  "Only one eye is not an eye at all."    It means, if you have only one child, you better have another...he may die.

Dying is easy in a country like Haiti.  It’s living, that’s difficult.  Each day, we hear the “cry of the poor...” and each day, we see unbearable suffering, especially the children.

Someone once said, “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”  I think this story would “break the heart of God"...maybe it will break your’s too.

The Story of Bendy…

This is a short story about a little two-year-old boy, named Bendy Julme.  He lives in the village of Le Tant in one of those “mud huts.”  His mother, Nelta, and his father, “Ti Ton,” live in this village by the lake.

Block houses taken by lake...

Haitians always live near families...

Nelta has only one child, Bendy. She was told that she might not have any more children, so little Bendy is her pride and joy.

Each day, little Bendy would waddle down near the lake to watch his father “try to catch a fish.”  His mud and stick hut was not far from the edge of the lake, which has been constantly rising for the last few years.

Bendy never got enough food, because his father never caught enough fish.  So when this happened, mother Nelta, would gather some wild leaves from the bushes, boil them and add salt to the water.
 
This is what she was getting ready to give Bendy to eat one day, not long ago.  There had been no food or milk that morning, no rice...nothing.  Bendy’s father had gone to try to catch fish early that morning, but he had not returned, and Bendy was hungry and crying.

Outside their hut, Nelta had put three rocks together and built a fire like the one below...

She set a large pot of water on it.  She had the leaves and the water in the pot...boiling.  (She was cooking on an open fire like the ladies below.)

When his mother went inside the hut to get a little salt, Bendy wandered over to the fire, reached up and tried to pull the lid off the pot, but the big pot of boiling water fell over on him...he was very badly burned.
 
Sometimes, poor Haitian mothers do not know or understand how important it is to get help fast, and to keep a wound clean.  When we found Bendy, his mother had rubbed dirt and mud into his burned leg.
 
This would normally have been bad enough, but Le Tant is a village where pigs and goats “do their business” right by the huts. 

So the dirt and mud is contaminated, and this was rubbed into Bendy’s horribly burned leg.

When we found Bendy like this, we explained to his mother that he could die if not treated.  Her heart was broken, she feared that Bendy would die.
 
We told her to quickly clean Bendy and put clothes on him.  We would take him to our clinic at our Jesus Healing Center.

Nelta could not bear to see the doctor debride and clean this wound, so she sent her mother, Bendy’s grandma, with him.
 
Dr. Mardy was there to care for him along with a Haitian nurse and Carole, our Medical Director.  Bendy got very good care at our clinic.

Betsy, (top left photo) a Physical Therapist with Hands of Light in Action, has been volunteering at our Physical Therapy Clinic in Miracle Village, formerly Camp Hope.  She examined Bendy and explained that he would need some therapy after the burn starts to heal.
 
Little Bendy is slowly recovering from his painful burn.  Perhaps, if he had been living in that nice little block house we had built for his parents, this wouldn’t have happened.  One thing we do know, charcoal fires kill and cripple many hundreds of children in Haiti every year.

As for Nelta and "Ti Ton," they have faith in God.  They are trusting the Lord to heal Bendy completely.
 
Even though they live in a mud hut, and even though they lost their home to the earthquake and flooding, they say that “what the Lord did for them before, He can do again.”  We believe He can...
 
We will keep you posted on Bendy and his parents, Nelta and "Ti Ton."
 
And, very soon, we will have some exciting news to share with you!  God is a good God!
 
God bless you,

Sherry