Dear Readers,
I need some advice. Our guard next door, Oscar, had an operation two months ago to remove an abcess near his stomach. It has been almost two months, but the incision has not healed. I took Oscar to the private clinic in Maputo and they told me that there was a hard mass near the incision, probably a tumor. Because I could not pay for further follow up care at the private clinic, Oscar turned to the national health system in Mozambique.
In the meantime, his employer, our next door neighbor Teresa, a mean-spirited lady without an ounce of humanity in her, found out that I had taken Oscar to the clinic. When she found this out, she told him that since he had found someone else to take care of him, he was fired.
Yesterday, I took Oscar to the emergency room at the central hospital. We were at the hospital for 5 hours. Although he's had an open wound for almost two months with a tumor like mass under it, they did not do any further tests. They referred him to urology, where he has an appointment tomorrow- Oscar's wound is leaking urine, so it is likely they punctured his bladder when they operated on his abcess the first time.
I will wait to see what they do tomorrow, but Oscar is running out of time. He is 28 years old. I have savings and could take him back to the private clinic, but I need to think about where I draw the line. Oscar is a person though, a poor person at the mercy of a dysfunctional government who doesn't care much about it's poor peple. I feel that, as a fellow human being, I need to help him or try to.
What would you do?
Erica
Oh, goodness Rik, this sounds so very hard. And precisely why Peace Corps was so adamant with us that we not provide any medical help or care. You get it. You know that you can't help them all but I see how it can be when you've started down this road with someone you feel close with and he is but one person and you feel that you can make a difference. I guess the decision now is whether you follow this through and try to NEVER again cross this line or if you find a way to set something in motion for him and then back out. He is a human being-yes, of course-- but you are fighting a system that is broken and you have to focus on the places where your skills can best be spent (if you were a doctor, I'd say to focus on medical care) without hurting the livelihood of your family. What a tough situation! What does Mattias think of this? What is his opinion?
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