Tani

I don’t have much to do with a lot of the kids on the ship. With so many patients coming and going it's difficult to spend any time getting to know them well when you don’t work on the wards. However there are some people you meet in life who make an impact. Tani is one of those.

When I first met 9 year old Tani, she was at the Hospitality Centre waiting for surgery on the ship. I glanced over at her and did a double take. The whole right side of her face and part of her right hand was missing, burnt away in a fire when she was a young child. Her nose and right eye completely gone, she looked at me out of her one good eye and smiled. Shy and withdrawn she tentatively joined in with the games of the other kids.

Pre surgery at the Hospitality Centre

I didn’t see Tani for a while but when I did, she was on the ward. The idea was to reconstruct her nose and upper lip using tissue from her scalp (she will hopefully return to Sierra Leone for reconstruction to her damaged eye). Despite going through this major surgery and having a large bandage wrapped around her head 24/7, Tani quickly found her feet and became the life and soul of the wards. Every time I saw her I was amazed at how much she had come out of her shell. Each day her cheeky attitude developed more and more, along with stacks of boundless energy. More often than not I would be walking past the ward and hear her bellowing from within. Once I found her, on a Sunday, in a completely different area of the hospital where she shouldn’t have been. When she knew she was rumbled, she giggled as I led her all the way back to her ward. I always made sure when I popped in to see her that I had a few moments to spare as it was given that she would run and hoist herself onto me, wrapping her arms and legs around me like a limpet and refusing to let me go. That girl is seriously strong once she gets hold!
Towards the end of her stay, Tani found the music video to ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyonce on the ipod of one of the nurses. Several times I walked in to find her glued to the screen acting out the dance moves…something that comes very easily to most Africans!

Post surgery with her reconstructed nose

I found myself wondering, ‘How could a child with such disfigurement could be so full of life and so unaware of her scars?’ Maybe it was all the love and attention that she received from the nurses (who taught her two English phrases ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m beautiful’ which she repeated over and over on a regular basis) or maybe the fact that she is probably the toughest, most resilient and most sassy little girl I have ever met. Every single person that met her fell in love with her huge personality.
She returned home at the beginning of the week, leaving a very empty space behind. My hope is that this spark within her will not fade over time as she is exposed to the stigma of disfigurement which, as is so often the case out here, leads to rejection. I think that she takes the term ‘inner beauty’ to a whole new level.