Our time with Emmanuel

Emmanuel left us this week to go to a more permanent home, with Pastor and Mrs. Jege, who care for the boys at the SIM/ECWA City Ministries Care Center in Gyero, about 40 minutes from here along a barely passable road. Ema had stayed with us for seven weeks. A lot of people ask us whether he improved in that time. Yes, but the changes were very subtle.

In the last week or two, Ema just started to play a bit. I handed him a toy dinosaur and instead of immediately dropping it, he first tried to eat it (maybe it looked like chicken!) then turned it over in his hand, examining it for a while. A couple of times we got into an exchange of flicked & throwing a carton top across the table at mealtime, to Barb’s dismay. Once, when he was up in the middle of the night, I handed him my cell phone with the flashlight on, and he seemed to try moving it around a bit. Finally, he gradually started picking things up, more or less at random, and throwing them. Sometimes it was when he seemed grumpy, but sometimes for fun? My slippers ended up in the toilet one day when someone left the door open!

Most of the time, Ema just wandered around or sat in a chair. He might just sit or stand still, he might be doing his repetitive hand motions, or he might make noises for hours. One of his noises may be a groan but doesn’t seem to be very distressed; it sounds like a car trying to start with a low battery. Another noise was his laughter, easier to tolerate though even that could get to be a bit much after a while. It did seem to me that he liked to hear the birds singing and sometimes enjoyed music.

Sometimes he would get on and off my lap over and over. Once I counted and found that he did this 50 times in an hour. He also learned to bring me his cup when he wanted water. I didn’t usually give him much at a time, since he might throw it somewhere after drinking a bit, so he would come to me over and over to get more. Actually, it was probably sometimes more a game to him than because of thirst.

Though he never learned to go toward the bathroom when he needed to, he did learn to use the toilet when we put him on it. He did this so quickly that he must have had prior experience and just needed to be oriented to our western-style toilet. He never did get used to our brushing his teeth—it always took two of us to do it. I did learn how to restrain him a bit better by the end, but still got scratched and pinched—never bitten!—and it was traumatic for him. The funny thing was that within a minute of finishing, he would seem to forget all about it.

The need to brush his teeth was emphasized by the dental work he ended up needing. While Dr. Maxfield had thought he could work under sedation with ketamine, it turned out that it barely slowed Ema down, so he needed full general anesthesia. He had to have 3 teeth extracted, including both lower front incisors, and had seven fillings. Dr. Maxfield did confirm that Ema was 15-16 years old based on his teeth, though he still looks more like a 6 year old.

One thing I will miss is the times we would go out to the bench swing at 5 in the evening and enjoy a little quiet time. I would try to read my Kindle and Ema would either get on and off my lap or go wandering around a little bit. I’m sure he really did enjoy that time outside the house in some way.

The other thing I will remember and miss most is the times when he would be happy for some reason (we never knew why, though sometimes it was music), and would sit and laugh on my lap and enjoy being tickled, kissed and cuddled. I just hope that he will get a lot of that one-on-one time in his new home, and also that he will be protected from the bullying that is so common among school age kids, even more in Nigeria than in the US.