The sad saga of Judah: Burn victim faces multiple surgeries in Miami

Judah Lovell... scarred in a bamboo ‘bussing’ incident.
Photos: Dalton Narine

Miami—A father and son occupy a room at Spring Hill Suites, Miami, 2,600 kilometres from their hometown in La Canoa, Santa Cruz.. They have become guests of fate. And they wait on time. Judah Lovell, seven, has been scarred by two surgeries performed 15 months ago at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope. An innocent observer of innocent fun, he had taken a full-frontal assault from a “bamboo-bussing” adventure that went awry in the presence of neighbourhood children and his brothers, Eron, 12, and Jamal, 10.

From that moment on, Michael Lovell and his son—who comes from a mixed-race heritage—have been trapped in an enduring downhill roller-coaster trip that he hopes will take a new slant and bend upward, someday, somehow, to the disposition of a higher power. Meanwhile, at the family home “up Kingston Avenue,” Oma Jankey, wife and mother, might have located the will and faith to decipher the hard knocks of a life that has buckled so primitively just so; nevertheless she finds guilt, and pain over her grief that “something like that shouldn’t have happened while I was at home.”

“It hard, it hard,” she says. “It sad.” Jankey places a daily call to her husband and son, holed up, like hibernating animals, at the Spring Hill Suites near the Jackson Memorial Hospital in an unseasonably wintry sub-tropical city, where the first surgery of Judah’s new life will be performed perhaps in a matter of weeks. “He’s in good spirits,” Jankey says. “But he cries sometimes. He says he’s missing me. I tell him I’m waiting until he comes back. He knows I must take care of his year-and-a-half-old sister, Sapphire. He and I have such a close relationship.”

Vivid recollections of trauma haunt her: Judah’s Lakers jersey is ablaze, grabbing at the upper body and neck, peeling the skin away. Her mother, Indra Jankey, celebrating her birthday that Sunday, October 11, 2009, rushing toward him. He bawling, she pulling the garment over his head. Jankey making the call to his father, who is on a landscaping job four minutes away. The son, a lefty, his body blackened, rolling the eyes wide with fright. Burns from belly to neck, and on the left hand, too, pushing him to ask, “Daddy, am I going to die?” Michael dashing off in his car with the boy, horn screaming and lights blinking all the way to the hospital.

But the nightmare is barely in its infancy. Lovell and Jankey spin a single thread into the longest rope that doesn’t seem to have an end. The unspooling begins, really, at the hospital. She, pleading with the doctor not to graft skin on the healing wounds. The doctor, shooting back that the throat is a tricky area, and she’ll have to live with that if he doesn’t graft. Two skin grafts later, emotions run helter-skelter within the family. Allegations of irregular bandage changes—sometimes five days overdue—reach the ears of doctors and nurses. Untreated flesh stink like rotting meat, is how the couple press their case. “The doctor’s negligence disfigured my child for life,” Jankey says.

(A head nurse informs a caller that “everything went well,” and promises to transfer the call to the doctor, which, weirdly or not, leads to a dead end.) More bitterness piles on. Lovell is searching for answers from authorities, but there seems to be no recourse. No remorse, either. A stroke befalls him. Now, Jankey is flashing back again. There’s an open wound in Judah’s neck, like someone had cut off a piece of skin. The neck has a pocket, like a kangaroo’s. Bacteria settle in. The skin is bursting around the neck, forming holes. Two, then three. Pus, a product of inflammation, oozing from the neck and filling two glasses. It smells like death. So, it’s back to the paediatric ward.

A recovering Judah lucks into a routine of arts and craft, which is taught by a person affiliated with a non-governmental organisation (NGO). Unable to tilt his head up or down and left or right, without bending or turning his body, he finds the sensation of stringing coloured beads into objects of his fancy a compensatory occupation. And bestows his artwork upon patients in the ward, as he does with gifts he receives from family and well-wishers.

In the meantime, good Samaritans have been rallying to Judah’s predicament. Ian Alleyne, presenter of Crime Watch on WinTV, Carol Boon, Anna-Lisa Habib, Dave Surajdeen and Kathryn Stollmeyer-Wight, among a host of others, bring national focus to the family’s plight. Stollmeyer-Wight is encouraged by a Mt Hope doctor’s summation about multiple surgeries to be performed in Miami. “By then, Judah’s story had become an incredible journey,” Stollmeyer-Wight says. “I put the story on my Facebook page. Then it took on a life of its own. People saw the wounds in the photographs. It opened their hearts. I grew up ‘bussing’ bamboo myself in Santa Cruz, and I just couldn’t see this little boy growing up so scarred.”

Facebook friends reach out from every corner of the world, shovelling all manner of aid and relief to the family.

Now it is left to someone like St Clair-based Ian Kalloo, managing director of Dalian Medical Concierge Services Ltd, an interactive medical management for people with group health insurance, to provide the key role in the final chapter of the Trinidad saga of Judah’s struggle. Because, since specialist medical care was required in the US, it was necessary to liaise with Olympus Ltd, Dalian’s US counterpart.

Kalloo would need to run interference between both companies on behalf of Judah. Kalloo and Dr Dale Maharaj, his business partner, hooked up with plastic surgeon Dr Ravindra Lalla and Deputy Speaker Fuad Khan. The association’s brainstorm inspires Dalian and Olympus to negotiate an initial deposit from US$250,000 to US$40,000.

Two major surgeries will address a majority of Judah’s problems, according to Kalloo. “Cosmetic surgery will be necessary, too,” he said. Stollmeyer-Wight and Ian Alleyne, Kalloo reminds, “have been instrumental in putting it all together,” including the trip to Miami. Judah and his father arrive with Stollmeyer-Wight. Facebook friends Trinidadian-born Jinnah Emamdee and his wife Carol greet the party at the hotel.  Emamdee remembers Judah’s face as calm but sad.  “I saw a child that was in pain,” he said. “It was the necklace made out of rope around his neck that really caught my eye... It was the skin of his neck.”

His new friends bring warmth whenever they visit, and Judah gifts them key chains from his alligator and lizard collection and a tiny Christmas tree, all of which he manufactures from a stash of beads he keeps next to his stuffed animals at his bedside. The other day, father and son, accompanied by Stollmeyer-Wight, swing by the popular, cavernous Dadeland Mall. She buys the boy a balloon. Minutes later, she notices that he has pulled his shirt over his neck and face; and now he’s shielding his distortion with the balloon. “People were gawking at him and he didn’t want them to see him disfigured,” Stollmeyer-Wight recalls. “Judah will get these operations somehow,” she says. “We’re not going to give up on him. He deserves better.”

DALTON NARINE

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Rosalind Gabriel...After the mas

Rosalind Gabriel is the undisputed champion of kiddies Carnival. Her elaborate presentations have captured the Band of the Year title for 14 consecutive years, this year being the most recent. “I feel real good about it. I don’t set out to build productions with prizes in mind, I do my best because I love the culture, I love to make children happy with what they wear,” she said when WomanWise contacted her. For years, children’s carnival has surpassed the adult version in terms of creativity and beauty. Gabriel, whose work is often used in events outside of Carnival, has been leading the charge, creating costumes that are elaborate, colourful, and true to her various themes. Her penchant for ornate costumes is a direct influence of the mas she grew up watching. “I grew up on 28 Stone Street, Corbeaux Town as they called it, and when I was little all the mas passed on Ariapita Avenue. All the children ran to the corner to see the bands when they passed; George Bailey, Harold Saldenah, those icons,” she recalled.

Her strict family upbringing didn’t allow for playing mas but thanks to her husband Norman, she was introduced into the world of mas making. “When we were courting, he was friends with Wayne Berkeley and we used to go the mas camp and help him build mas.” Gabriel, 61, has worked with many other bandleaders, among them, Peter Minshall, Steven Lee Heung, and Cito Velasquez. When she had her first child, Gabriel didn’t hesitate to immerse him into the experience she was allowed to watch growing up. “I put my son in mas from the age of two and when he was seven I made his first individual costume. When my last child was 13 and her days in junior mas were coming to an end, I decided to put out my first band with the encouragement of Lil Hart,” she said. In 1989, Gabriel’s first band hit the road in the medium category under the title, Court of the Mythical Fire Opal. Gabriel has long upgraded to the large band category with over 200 masqueraders and since 1996, has dedicated her presentations to local themes.

The bandleader has been responsible for many firsts. Her band was the first children’s band to compete on Carnival Monday and in its very first year in 1994, won the Band of the Day title. Gabriel repeated the win up until 1998. When the adult bands complained, the National Band Carnival Association (NCBA) was forced to create a new rule in 1999 that stated for a children’s band to be judged in an adult competition there had to be two adults in costume to every child. “Joanna Humphrey used to design the band and Helen and John Humphrey encouraged me to go out on Carnival Monday. They said mas is dead on a Monday we should bring out a band. It worked well and eventually, years later, I started doing it on a Tuesday. This year we had our first alliance with Best Village and we came second in the medium category, I was thrilled,” she said. Gabriel’s band was also the first to have its own music truck. While the average kiddie’s band relies on DJs placed along the routes, Gabriel felt having her own music would allow her to keep the clean, family-type atmosphere her band is renowned for.

“Parents gravitate to the band because of the rules and regulations in place, no alcohol, playing of clean music. It’s a challenge to keep the music clean, we usually have to take tunes from other years,” she said. It’s those factors as well as her passion for Carnival that Gabriel believes contributes to her success. “I never really thought about the band or the mas as a business. I would start a costume from scratch and do it over if it’s not to my liking. Because of my reputation for good costuming I would not put something on the road I am not happy with,” she explained. “The theme is important to me, it must be nation-building and educational. Now that we have emerged in adult mas I am looking for a theme that has a deep meaning and costume of the standard I do for the children,” said Gabriel who is already in planning mode for 2011. Bringing out a band is not without its challenges and Gabriel believes the challenges have increased in recent years. “In the last three years, the skilled labour is really hard to come by. Before there were a wealth of people coming to your doorsteps asking for employment but those days are gone and the few people you do get you have to hold on to,” she said.

As a person who came out of an era when costumes were made from scratch, Gabriel is also critical of the new trend of importing costumes. “I think it is causing the artisans we do have to not do what they did before. It will hamper the creativity and it causes everything to look the same. I do not believe there is a care for the culture by some bands I like to call moving parties. They aren’t selling costumes to enhance our culture, they sell a partying experience, they don’t have a thought to help the culture along the way,” she said. Since advocates for bikini mas like to justify their arguments with comparisons to Brazil, Gabriel said people need to look behind the floats where half-naked samba queens ride. “Look behind the float, you would see real costumes with creativity. We have taken the skimpiest of Brazil, which is the minority there and made it the majority here. In adult mas, the party bands have reached; I don’t think we can’t get any worse with lack of identity. You cannot tell the difference between those bands and to my horror I learned there is a company in Miami making headpieces,” she said, stating that in other islands there is a mandate that a certain percentage of the costumes be made in those countries.

Gabriel is also critical of the congestion experienced on the street on Carnival Tuesday. Like Brian MacFarlane, her band waited five-hours before reaching the Savannah stage and she blames bands that went off-route to cut in front of other bands. “We go through the same problem year after year. I think we need a lot of help and a lot of planning,” she said. Still, despite the problems, Gabriel is an optimist who believes Carnival can never die. “I am the supreme optimist and I do not believe, they may try, but nobody can kill our Carnival. It won’t happen.”

source Trinidad Guardian

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