I have had the privilege of working with Mme. Thankful (the lady from an earlier post) this past week. She has been a joy to work with and even though she only speaks French, I have been making do with my kindergarten level language abilities to discover how truly thankful she is.
First, however, I must make a correction to what I wrote in an earlier post. Mme. Thankful is a Cameroonian woman who was married to a Senegalese Muslim, so she was also a practicing Muslim. Her sister died in childbirth 18 months ago, leaving behind a baby daughter with a serious breathing abnormality that resulted in Mme. Thankful taking the two month old to a major hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon. During a two week stay at the hospital the bill amounted to more than 200.000 cfa (more than $400 USD, 5 times the average monthly salary). At the end of her two week stay the family’s money had run out and she was counseled to take the baby home and let her die. It was at this time that a family member of Mme. Thankful, who lived across the border from us in Cameroon, told her about the Gamboula Hospital. So Mme. Thankful brought her daughter, Happiness (no I am not making up the name) to our hospital where she was treated for three months. At the end of her stay she was overwhelmed with the generosity of Clarisse, the nutrition garden, the missionaries and staff, thus her desire to come back to Gamboula to help us. As a result of her stay here she became a Christian, and is about the most thankful mother I have ever witnessed. She adores her adopted baby and responds to her every cry.
She has been working in the garden all week and despite nearly stepping on a snake the other day, she has persevered and has left us with a tremendous gift to pass on to those needing the garden in the future. Mme. Thankful is also a seamstress and has been sewing for me in the afternoons. My brother, Remy, gave Clarisse and I some beautiful fabric as a souvenir of our visit to the diamond mine last week and Mme. Thankful has transformed it into a beautiful dress that I wore to church this morning. I have never received so many compliments before. While I wear pants and t-shirts all week it is fun to ‘dress-up’ on Sundays and be a little girlie. I will have to wear it one Sunday in Victoria.
