A CHILD NAMED PROBLEM
By Oddny Gumaer
Yasmine was nine months pregnant when the army threatened to destroy her home, and her whole village was forced to run. They walked in the heat of the day, constantly looking back to see if the soldiers were getting closer. From afar they could see the smoke of their houses burning. There was no turning back.
She delivered her
baby in the jungle that night. The villagers risked their lives to stay with her until the baby was born, but then she insisted that they go: “You need to leave and get to Bangladesh. I will stay here for a bit with the baby and recover.” Nobody wanted to leave her, but they knew she was right, and left. Yasmine spent the night alone with her new baby in the jungle, not daring to sleep as she listened for the sound of the enemy approaching. “I was so afraid,” she recalls. The next day she got up
and kept walking, eventually reaching Bangladesh. She now lives with nine others in a small shack in a crowded refugee camp, where I met her.
She related this story as I held her baby. “I haven’t given him a name yet,” Yasmine told us, and laughingly added, “I thought I would call him Problem.”
I don’t know what this little child’s life will hold. He lives in an overcrowded camp in a country that doesn’t want him, where there is not
enough food, water, or shelter to go around. He has no citizenship, no assurance of education, no privacy, and only minimal health care.
But what I do know is this: he is created in the image of God, and I will do my best to make sure the world knows...READ MORE
