Green Thumb

On April 25 Jenny wrote about how Joey and I had gone into town to work on an orienteering requirement for Boy Scouts. That was the beginning of a story that I didn't write about then, but has now played out much more fully. Our final destination on that walk into town, following a map and using a compass, was a mosque nearby that had a couple of towers that Joey could measure the height of using some techniques from his Boy Scout handbook. Once we finished the scout work we were confronted by a group of people begging in the median in front of the mosque. We spoke with them and tried to help them understand what our purpose in town was. We explained about the ship and that the ship offered surgeries on board. I knew at that time that the schedule had already gotten very full and I wasn't qualified to screen people for surgery. There was one fellow lying there on the ground, however, who said he had "sickness" in his thumb. He unwrapped his thumb and showed it to me and it looked quite bad, tapering up from the joint to a greatly swollen, 1.5 inch diameter tip that was open and infected. He had been packing the wound with herbs in an attempt to stop the infection. I figured that he could easily die from infection with his condition and I thought I should really try to help him. I gave him what clinic information I could and gave him my name. A few days later he came to the gangway of the ship asking for me. I asked Jenny if there was any way to get his thumb looked at. She doubted it knowing how full the schedule was, but knew that there would be an orthopedic surgery team doing some additional screening soon and so she referred me to the orthopedic team leader. I had to go to a bit of effort, but was able to get him a card for the screening. By the time I worked that out he had left so I drove back out to the mosque the next day to deliver the card and, thankfully, Vincent was there lying in his usual spot in the median. After the screening, I was told that Vincent had gotten "the thumbs-up for a thumb off". I was happy that my extra effort had landed him a place in the surgery schedule. Well, Vincent came to the ship, had a portion of his thumb amputated and left. It was not the last we saw of him though. He returned multiple times afterward for more surgery on his thumb because it continued to get infected. I began to wonder why I had found him and worked to get him seen if he may be in no better shape when we leave Benin. I don't know how Vincent is doing now that we are gone. I pray and hope that his thumb is healing. What I do know is that there were a number of day volunteers (local people who work with us during the day as translators or who help in other ways on the ship) who began asking why we were helping him. They had apparently said that he had been cursed and that was why his thumb would not heal. They said that he had been caught stealing and had had his thumb slashed because of it. I don't know if there was any truth to their story, but clearly they thought he was not a good man and we should not be bothering to help him. I doubt all of this would have come about if he had not been returning multiple times to the ship for treatment. It all made me wonder if maybe part of the purpose for him being a patient on the ship and returning again and again was to help our day volunteers understand that, in following the example of Jesus, we do not turn away those who may need help the most. Jesus was a friend to all and spent time among the outcast and those who society considered to be evil and had rejected. If we are to follow Jesus example, we also have to reach out to those same kinds of people. I hope that the fact that we were helping this man, whom some of our day volunteers did not consider worthy of our help, helped them to understand more about the true character of Jesus. I don't know the full purpose of having found Vincent that day, but I'm sure that God knows and I will have to leave that for Him to sort out. I am encouraged, though, that perhaps the purpose for him to come to the ship was much greater and went much deeper than just helping to fix his thumb.

John