April 2023
Today’s installment regarding the Afghan family and the help that we can give at St Lucas.
We learned today that the father of the three, soon to be four child family has ended employment with his year-long employer at the end of March. The pain in his leg and chest is a result of shrapnel wounds, and was limiting in the physical work his job demanded.
Today we went to the dentist at the Peoples’s Clinic on Delmar, a very nice facility, catering to lower income people, and he had his teeth checked. The result was the need for a tooth to be pulled, a crown, and a root canal. No fun, but likely better done here than in Afghanistan. So we will see to it that he gets those treatments.
But the issues regarding the limits from the shrapnel wounds are a little harder to overcome.
On a brighter note, his wife and one of our group are meeting regularly to learn English. The person in our group is a retired teacher so her skills have been very helpful. The mother, soon to have a fourth child next month, looks forward to the lessons, and is less and less hesitant to speak conversationally. She is understanding English sentence structure better than we had expected.
We have seen them driving in Tower Grove Park, where the father is teaching his wife to drive. That is also an exciting Americanization step.
We look forward to the arrival of her fourth child, joining the first grader, who is learning English in her city school, the second child with Down Syndrome, who attended her first day of school today, a special class at the city schools, and their little brother, who spends his day climbing on his mother’s lap. When the second child returns from her first day at school, she will be full of exciting stories. I envy the family today. More to come.