There is a little boy at the hospital right now named Omarou. When he was very young (about 18 months), he crawled into a pot of boiling oil, and his hand was badly burned. Unfortunately, this is something that happens very often here in Niger. When you combine the fact that there are lots of babies (Niger has one of the highest birthrates in the world) with the fact that most people here cook over an open fire, the results can be devastating. Consequently, we see a lot of burn victims at the CURE hospital.

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Larwan and Omarou have been coming together for joint art therapy sessions. There is a good dynamic between these two boys. They enjoy each other’s company and — not that this was the deciding factor in having them come together — it’s very easy for me to plop the two of them together on the wheelchair and get them over to my art therapy room. They’re both small, so it works nicely.

Also, both of them cannot walk. But don’t get me wrong, they can get wherever they need to go; they have their ways. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a busy day at the hospital. I usually see one kid at a time for art therapy sessions. This day, though, got so busy, and time was running out. I have a regular schedule with the kids, but things are unpredictable, and there are so many variables that come into play. The kids go back and forth to the operating bloc, for dressing changes and for physical therapy, so I have to be flexible. But in this case, the day was almost over and there were three little boys that I hadn’t seen. Read the rest of this entry »

Mariama was born with four fingers on each hand. If you look closely at the first picture, you can see her fingers joined together. She already had surgery on her right hand to separate the fingers. She will have surgery on her left hand soon. The surgery doesn’t call for a plaster cast, so I felt bad that all the other kids were getting their casts painted and she was left with a bright white bandage. If we painted her bandage, the paint would seep through the gauze. But then I remembered that I had colored tape! So we wrapped her bandage in pink and white tape and added little hearts in marker on top of the tape. I think she was excited to go back to the patient guest house to show everyone that she had a decorated bandage, too!

The kids walked into the room, or were carried in (those with casts on their legs), and I think they were pretty excited to see that they were going to get to do something fun and specifically devoted to just them. Paint, colors, paper, glue, pompoms, stickers! – all just for them.

In order to introduce the kids and their mothers (or grandmothers) to the program, I started off with a big group session for everyone. We did some fun crafts (Again, thank you to Chris for donating so much stuff!). The mothers got just as into it as the kids. I generally see kids one-on-one to be able to really interact and give my full attention, but this was a great way to give the mothers an idea of what is going on when their child goes for an art therapy session. Read the rest of this entry »