“I will murder you for this”
Tuesday evening in the mountain village of Cachora. As so often a heated argument is in full swing in one of the small huts. It would have been better, if the stepfather had not drunk so much. Without alcohol this house would be much more peaceful. Sharp yells and wild threats. The man attacks his wife. In his eyes mad determination flares up. It won’t be long until the blood starts flowing. The 18-year-old boy is watching the scene unfold and does nothing. So far.
Suddenly Pedro* steps in. He cannot bear to see how his stepfather beats his mother fit for hospital. “I will sort you out too” thinks the father and brandishes a knife. He lifts his right hand and buries it deep in Pedro’s body. The knife penetrates the chest wall, tears through the diaphragm and cuts through the left liver lobe.
Yesterday surgeon Dr Reinhard Kühn operated on Pedro, Dr Elisabeth Stempel conducted the anaesthetic. During the operation a lot of blood was found in the stomach area, a spurting haemorrhage in the diaphragm and blood in the chest.
Pedro will probably make it. But the family needs more than a surgeon’s team for the anxious hours in the operating theatre. Who can effect a change in the lives of these people, where loves answers hate and the beer-bottle is banished forever onto the rubbish heap?
Diospi Suyana is a missionary hospital. We are convinced that Jesus Christ can effect such a change.
(*name has been changed. After his operation the patient is rolled to his place on the A+E ward)
