Maima Sehkar’s improbable journey from war-ravaged Liberia to suburban Denver began in a primitive hut outside the capital city of Monrovia, propelled by a simple desire.
She wanted a drink of water.
During lunch at a neighbor’s home, the 13-year-old girl found a wooden storage barrel, grasped a nearby cup, dipped it full and swallowed.
By the time she recoiled and spit out the remaining liquid, she had begun to retch blood. The barrel contained lye, and though she ingested little of the caustic substance, it seared her esophagus and generated scar tissue that all but clamped it shut.
From the frantic first moments through the next four months, Marie Sehkar transported her daughter to several hospitals – most of them woefully ill-equipped – in a desperate search for medical care that finally, in late April, brought them to Denver.
Here, Maima’s aunt and uncle, Christian missionaries Beth and Tony Weedor, have mobilized their community and set the stage for a relatively rare operation to restore the girl’s ability to eat and drink.
But the outpouring of generosity and the ongoing support effort almost didn’t happen, as a combination of medical issues and bureaucratic entanglements nearly moved Marie to abandon hope and take her daughter home to die.
But now Maima sits in the Weedors’ Littleton living room, gathering strength for a day-long surgery to remove the damaged esophagus and then stretch and attach stomach tissue to the base of her throat. In a best-case scenario, the family has been told, Maima could be eating solid food again about a month after the operation.
Before she speaks in the clipped English of her Liberian homeland, the young girl with long, black braids barely thinner than her arms rinses her mouth and spits into the sink.
She still can’t swallow, and relies on canned formula channeled through a feeding tube for nutrition. Her description of a long, harrowing trip spills out in one brief, reticent remark.
“I was scared,” Maima says.
Literally born into a time of fear, she grew up when the violence of protracted civil war forced families into displacement camps, Liberia’s economy and infrastructure crumbled, and relatives sometimes pushed aside the floating bodies of war victims to gather river water.
Even amid a fragile peace, medical care remains crude. The hospital in Monrovia that first treated Maima wouldn’t allow the girl’s parents inside.
“I went three or four days without seeing her,” says Marie. “I thought she was dead and they didn’t want to tell me.”
In early April, Marie took Maima to a humanitarian hospital ship that pulled into port with more advanced facilities than those available in Monrovia. But Maima’s condition proved too complex, and doctors advised her to seek treatment outside Africa.
To Marie, that seemed nearly impossible.
“I just started praying,” says Marie. “I made prayer requests in churches everywhere. I knew I couldn’t do it myself.”
Meanwhile, Tony Weedor, who fled Liberia’s civil war in the early 1990s and wound up at Denver Seminary on his way to becoming a missionary, had been gathering financial support to fly Marie and Maima to Denver.
But visa issues complicated the problem. The U.S. Embassy in Liberia had virtually stopped approving travel to the United States.
The alternate plan was for Marie to take Maima to neighboring Ivory Coast to apply for visas. They got the documents, but while in Ivory Coast, problems with Maima’s feeding tube, including an infection, nearly ended their journey. Senior doctors at local hospitals told Marie there was nothing they could do.
At that point, even with their flight to the U.S. only days away, Marie nearly gave up. She resolved to transport Maima back to Liberia to die in her homeland.
“I lose hope,” she recalls, “because the only way Maima can eat is through the tube. Even her own saliva can’t go down.”
A young doctor intervened and found a new feeding tube. But Maima still suffered from dehydration and poor nutrition.
On the 22-hour flight from Abidjan, she grew so weak that, during a stopover at JFK Airport in New York, airline officials rushed her to a local hospital for overnight treatment.
The next day, when the Weedors met Marie and Maima at Denver International Airport, they took Maima directly to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital.
Maima spent more than two weeks there, where Marie marveled at a level of treatment – and a free flow of information.
“It surprises me,” Marie says, “because we can’t do this in Liberia. Some nurses came in on their day off just to see Maima and me. Everyone was so good to us.”
The timing of the surgery remains uncertain, the family says.
Meanwhile, donations – including clothing and formula for Maima – continue to arrive as the Weedors and friends attempt to cover costs and, they hope, send Maima home with enough money to cover future travel for any necessary follow-up treatment.
But the simple fact that Maima survived the journey seems to family and friends an incredible gift.
“The fact that they were able to keep her alive for four months,” says physician and family friend Bentley Tate, “is a miracle in itself.”
Staff writer Kevin Simpson can be reached at 303-820-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com.
To contribute, please send donations to: AMG Guaranty Trust, 6501 E. Belleview Ave., Suite 400 Englewood, CO 80111. Note on the check: “Miracle for Maima Fund.”
