My body is still pulsating from my day at the children’s home. I had my hands full today – literally – holding multiple children at a time. And I like the older ones so these were not light babies. My muscles must be getting a lot stronger. It was a little drizzly today and the children were very grouchy and teary today. We had a lot of tears. Lauren and Jordan went to go help out in special needs for a while so I was by myself with the toddlers and their mama’s. I’m noticing a lot more illness – fevers, coughing, and skin diseases. Do all babies have runny noses or just these ones because they are ill? Lauren and I are both fight sore throats, coughs, and nausea and we have a feeling the kids are playing a large part in that. Its worth it, SO worth it, but were trying to think of ways to stay precaution against getting ill ourselves (Jordan is so immune). I really wish I had a book about the common illness of African children so I could read up on what’s going on with them and how best to help. I think a nutritious diet would make a world of difference but from 1 year old they are eating only beans and posho for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Steven came and helped me a lot today again. He is so good with the kids and they love him so much. We talked a lot about the differences we see between Africa and America and what we like and don’t about both. He was able to be really honest with me about his distaste for most African men and their habits of laziness and drunkenness and abuse and debt. He was telling how he’s always trying to encourage his friends to save their money and be smart and take only one wife and have only the children they are able to provide for. His adopted father is Elio, the owner of St. Judes and Elio loves and respects and has given Steven so much. The most valuable thing Elio has given that I have seen so far is Stephen ability to process life correctly and handle his pain and life devastations in healthy ways. Steven works as a video editor when people need promotional videos or wedding video etc. He makes pretty good money, sometimes up to 200 a video. I told him in the U.S. a good promotional video can be charged up to $6000. That probably wasn’t very encouraging. He told me, if he can afford it, he wants to adopt one of the children from St. Judes someday. Every week he buys all of the children a treat out of his own money. Today they had these sweet cookies made out of banana that they loved. He told me all this as he rocked Regina (my favorite little precious one) to sleep.
A cute 10 year old named Jennifer came this morning and gave me a long letter illustrated with colorful pictures. She told me all about herself and her life in it and asked if we could be friends. It was very sweet and cute. I have 4 mosquito bites on my foot and they are itching bad. I got to talked to Jenevieve and Kelli and Meghan on skype today so my friendship cup was really filled up.
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