Dear Mr. Bland,
Happy New Year! I pray that everyone there had a blessed Christmas and New Year! I have had a very interesting past few weeks. Things around the orphanage are always interesting, but there have been some extra surprises in there for us.
Christmas was really good! Papa took all the kids out in shifts to buy new Christmas outfits. They all looked really good on Christmas morning at church (and because it was raining really hard, some at home). The four little girls who are all about the same age, Rosa, Merita, Helena, and Teresa all got the same outfit. So there were 4 "twins" running around. The littlest looked really cute too. The set of boy twins, Jacob and Esau, had matching outfits. Sonia and the girl twin, Estherfina, had matching outfits, Joao looked like a grown up boy, and Ernestinio was all clean and nice. Catarina got a little dress and she looked very nice as well. All that cleanness lasted for about a hour until someone decided that it would be a good time to go to the bathroom all over himself and the rest followed suit. Although, Catarina's outfit lasted all day, the plastic pants help a lot! We enjoyed GREAT food together. We had sausage and an egg for breakfast with bread, tea, and bananas (a serious breakfast feast!!). Lunch was rice, pork (and chicken for the non pork eaters), and juice. Supper was chappati, rice, chicken, potatoes, soda, and I think something else but I can't remember. It was wonderful. After supper we all gathered around the tree and opened presents. It was a good Christmas, all the kids were happy.
Before Christmas Catarina was getting sick. We decided to wait until after christmas to take her to the hospital, because she wasn't that sick. Tuesday we went in. She ended up having malaria pretty bad and they wanted to admit her. So I (who was also having malaria) got all of our stuff ready and prepared to go to the hospital to stay. I was so scared, because here I am speaking only english, a little bit of Portuguese and a little bit of Shona, at the hospital with no english speaking person. We were brought to our room and there was a big room with 7 beds. Each bed already had one patient on it and a mother to go with each child. Some beds had two patients on them, with two mothers. So we got a bed, it only had one other child on it, thankfully. We put our stuff in the corner and got the bed set up for us, all the while people were staring. They started Katie's medicine and people were staring. They were talking about us, they don't think I know what they are saying but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. I would just like to say that staying in the hospital in Africa is MUCH different than in America. We ended up being there for 5 days. It was pretty tough. The nurses have little to no bedside manner, and the other mothers are constantly trying to steal your stuff. Not to mention the constant stares and comments by passers by. On a positive note, some of the women in my room were so helpful and would just drag me to the next place. If I didn't understand something the nurse was saying the other women would make some sort of signal to let me know what they meant. For example, they were asking if she had a cough, but I didn't know what they were saying, the nurse kept asking the same question and each time she would get louder and meaner. Finally I looked around with that "help" look in my eye and one of the moms looked at me and then coughed, and I got it. Those women, the ones who weren't stealing from me, were so gracious and I am so grateful that they were there.
That stay in the hospital also opened my eyes to another fact of Africa. Death. A lot of kids died in those 5 days that we were there. The first I saw was the very first day, Katie was waiting to get her IV put in and the baby in front of us died. It wasn't anything like a child dying in the hospital should be. I come from America, I am expecting some "ER" like drama to unfold, working for hours to save this kid. But that didn't happen. They put a couple of puffs of air and that was it. I sat there and watched someones baby die, and the nurses didn't even seem to care. I was like, people, I know CPR, lets do something about this. But nothing. I was crying, I thought I was going to be sick, and there was a room full of people just sitting there. That was my first taste of death in the hospital. There were many when I got to the ward. You always knew, the screams were telling. And you can look around and see the mothers holding their babies a little closer and tighter. It was really hard. I was reminded of the brevity of life, and it was sobering. Life is definitely something we take for granted, and being there helped me to not do that so much.
We were home New Year's eve and I was so exhausted. Sleeping with 5 other people in one twin bed doesn't lend itself to much sleep. Although cozy, I didn't sleep much. So my malaria was kicking up again. I ended up pretty down for a few days and then went to a private clinic in Chimoio (much nicer than the hospital). I had malaria and they gave me medicine and within a week I was fine. Now, I am happy to report me and Kate, although having a weird rashy thing, are doing well, and neither of us have malaria. Praise the Lord! That was a hard run.
These days are going well, it's raining a lot. I think all the rain is making the well dirty, so I have been collecting rain water for drinking, washing, etc. It tastes SO much nicer than the well water! The kids are all back from boot camp, and getting back to work. The little ones are all doing pretty well and are excited about the staff returning from their boot camps.
