Lost Words Dictionary

Our mission station volunteered a truck, a driver and me to assist the hospital with a polio and vitamin A vaccination program. 

My friend Kaba came along to help me communicate with the doctors. 

They spoke French and Bambara, I spoke broken Malinke and Kaba understood us all. 

He helped us understand each other.

We gave the vaccinations to children up to five years in age. 

I was responsible for giving the polio vaccinations.

As we were making our way from village to village in the remotest parts of western Mali, I felt good to be a small part of the big undertaking of eradicating polio from the continent of Africa. 

It is good to be a part of something that is bigger than you.

The name of the polio vaccination program is “Kick Polio Out Of Africa.” 

The symbol is the continent of Africa kicking a soccer ball. 

Everyone loves the symbol because everyone loves soccer.

The polio vaccination was in small plastic bottles that looked like Visine eye drop bottles. 

Mothers lined up with their children under giant baobab trees. 

I squeezed two drops from the bottles under the children’s tongues to protect them from the dreaded disease.

Most of the children were terrified of receiving  the vaccination, and most of them were terrified of me.

We were so far out in the countryside, the children had never seen someone like me before.

Their moms wrapped arms around them and held them still.

I gently squeezed their jaws with my left hand until their mouths popped open.

I gently squeezed the vaccine bottles with my right hand until two drops dropped under their tongues.

Sometimes, I had to hold their noses and blow into their faces to get them to swallow the vaccine. 

“The cure can be more painful than the disease,” my grandpa used to say.

Not in this case, though. 

Polio is a powerful, fearful disease.

One little four year old girl was struggling against her mom and me with all of her might. 

Just as I got the first drop of vaccine under her tongue, Kaba yelled, “Bakary (that is my Malinke name) watch out!” 

A stream of pee came from under the little girl’s dress all over my flip flopped feet!

It was her way of saying, “Now we’re even.” 

I understood.

“I care about you,” I said in Malinke. 

She looked at me through tearful, defiant eyes. 

“You have a strange way of showing it!” she must have thought.

I hope my small moment with the little girl and the polio vaccine under the baobab tree will help her live and remain a beautiful part of our wonderful world.