Minnie

Minnie is a fellow missionary from the Philippians. She works for the hospital doing community outreach in the village teaching about health and hygiene. She had been here for a year already and was planning to stay another year. She was kind of quiet and timed but not shy to speak her mind and was always willing to help when anyone asked. She came to the Nutrition center regularly to visit the kids and to help.

On Monday July 30^th she went in to the hospital and got a Malaria test done it came back positive and she decided to keep it to herself and try to get rid of it naturally. She was familiar with Malaria from home in the Philippines. One of the things people take is “Nim tea” as a preventative measure for Malaria. She had cured her malaria before using it and she thought she could do it again. On Tuesday is when she was held up in Bronwyn’s hut. Wednesday she was puking and just about fainted when she stood up. Thursday she was finally forced to go down to the hospital to take another Malaria test and it came back as .75% WOW!!! That was the highest malaria count that they had ever seen. The doctors made her stay in the hospital and by Friday she was having convulsions and in a coma. Saturday she had decreased reflexes to painful stimuli but her convulsions had stopped. By Sunday morning at 1:30 am she was dead. At 5:15 am we all met up at the hanger and sang songs and prayer for Minnie and shared stories about what we would remember and miss about her. Then we watched as they carried her tiny body into the small airplane and took off for N’Djamena (the capital of Chad) where she would be shipped back to her family in the Philippians in a box.

It’s hard enough trying to teach the people here in this village how to take care of themselves and how to keep their children alive. It should be that hard to keep one of our own alive.