Niger Vocational Training Centre

This is Aichatou, one of the young Tuareg girls in our school. Aichatou lives two days drive into the desert in a village and came into town this year to live with her brother-in-law to attend our school. She is shy and unsure of herself, but making great progress and I really enjoy her!

Back in February  she was telling me about how she gets really bad headaches and sinus pain and snores like crazy and has trouble breathing, especially when she lays down to sleep at night. CT scans (she already had them taken when she told me this) showed that her left nostril and sinus opening was completely blocked by a growth. (turns out it is benign- yay!)

She did not want to risk the National Hospital (and who can blame her!) so we went in February to CURE hospital in town. We were told that they currently could not do anything, but there was a team of specialist coming in June who could possibly take her case since they were maxio-facial specialists (mostly doing cleft lip and cleft palate work). So Monday we went for the meeting with this group, and her surgery is booked for Thursday! We are so pleased they were able to make the time for her and they say her quality of breathing should be much better after this.

The group out here doing this work is from the organization FREE TO SMILE. Check them out here: Free to smile webpage

I will update you when she is out and once again I will be there to wait with her and pick her up etc. We know this family well and are pleased to be able to love them and serve in this way. Please pray for Aichatou. I know this particular surgery can be painful to recover from!