It's Been A While

Hey everyone,

Maxine and I are rotating who writes the blog postings and it’s my turn this week, so hopefully what I’m about to say makes sense. I’m writing this post in a WORD document because we currently do not have power.

So it has been a week since our last posting and a lot has happened. On Saturday we started out tired because we worked 12 hour days since we had been here. Personally I was hoping that we could take it easy and not work as long but the 2 other volunteers where out of town so we thought we would help the Moms out and work another long day. When we left our room in the morning, a bus was in the driveway, and a ton of local volunteers were helping out. It was such a blessing because we could finally take it easy and just play with the older kids.  I think the only thing we did that day was play soccer and help with the 7:30 pm feeding. Right before we began feeding the babies, I felt sick. I told Maxine I thought I was getting sick so I went back to the room to lie down. She thought I was being a big baby and that I just didn’t want to feed.  She had reason to think that because feeding is not my favorite part of being here but I actually did have a stomach virus haha.  At about 1 in the morning Maxine started to feel sick as well. The next morning I was feeling better but I had a fever of 100.4 F, so I took some Advil and was fine. Maxine however was feeling worse.  She had a low-grade fever that grew to 101.7F. After a full day of lying in bed we decided to go to the Kenyan hospital Sunday evening. The doctor's office's are so different here. The doctors do everything very differently. They even take your temperature under your armpit, instead of under your tongue! Anyway, the doctor told us Maxine had e coli and gave us 3 different kinds of medicine to kill the bacteria. For the next 2 days Maxine was in bed (miserable), but managed to read a lot on her Kindle which she did not have any time for previously. I was around a lot to take care of her, but also helped Wilson dig a trench, and do some other chores around Happy Life.

Tuesday afternoon Maxine started to feel better and was craving pizza. She hadn’t had much to eat the past three days so we asked the grounds keeper, Wilson, if we could get pizza anywhere. He said we could go to this resort down the road called Safari Park. At around 7:00 p.m. we, and the other 2 volunteers, Kyle and Robert, went to the resort for some pizza. Its not safe to walk around at night so we took boda boda’s, which are motorcycles, to the resort.  At the resort we asked a staff member where a restaurant was and he took us. We didn't have pizza that night, but Maxine had no complaints- we ate very well. :) The restaurant turned out to be a very nice Brazilian style restaurant. We ate so many types of meat, including: camel, ostrich, crocodile, goat and chicken gizzard( I thought it was amazing and Maxine hated it). At the restaurant they had a show at 9 p.m. so we stayed and watched it. There was African dancing and acrobatics. It was so impressive; it was hard to believe their talents. After we ate we went back to Happy Life and went to sleep on a very full stomach.

On Wednesday Pastor Peter drove us to Village market, which is supposed to be the nicest mall in Nairobi. On the way there we passed the rich side of town and saw beautiful houses that were huge.

This is one of the houses on the way to Village Market

fruit trees on the way to Village Market

road on the way to Village Market

The view on the way to Village Market

The main reason for going to the mall was to get groceries that we couldn’t buy in Roysambu. When we first got there it was weird because we saw so many different ethnicities. After we got our groceries Peter took us to a really nice café where we got cold coffee. The café not only had cold coffee, it had hamburgers, fries and many other western foods. It was so strange being in this part of town. It definitely didn’t feel like a third world country.  After we got back from the mall we were in our room resting when Pheobe, one of the moms, told us Abba died in the hospital. Abba was the first baby that Maxine fed. She was almost 4 months old and was just over the size of a new born. She had pneumonia and meningitis. 

Today was a relaxing day. We brought out some of the toys we got from home and played with the older children. We don’t play with the older kids as much as we would like because we feel the moms need more help taking care of the infants than they do with keeping the older kids occupied. Here are some pictures of the kids today.

Toby (Maxine's favorite)

Erica

Prince

Trying to get ready for the picture

playing with the guys

Toby

Prince (My Favorite)

Maxine and her main man, Toby

Our First Two Days in Kenya!

Where to even begin... I feel as though we have been here for a lot longer than just 2 days. Life here, although it has a laid back atmosphere, never stops at Happy Life Children's Home. There is always someone crying, someone laughing, someone needing to be changed, waiting to play, someone wanting to be picked up. The first day we just did our best to learn as much as possible and learn as many names as we could. There are 22 staff members that are in and out all the time; there are roughly 60 children. We started our day yesterday at 6:30 am, and went until 9:30 at night when we finally made dinner. Here we are right before starting our first day at Happy Life:

It was so hard to sleep our first night here between the nerves, the barking and fighting wild dogs, the babies crying... But we did our best. Anywayyyy, yesterday, our first day here, we helped with the first feeding between 8:30 and 9 am in the isolation room. This is a room for infants who are too sick to be around the others. I was feeding Abba who is almost 3 months old and seriously smaller than most newborns. She is in isolation because she has pneumonia and an infection in her lungs that is making it hard for her to breathe. She is so beautiful, and fragile, it's like holding a porcelain doll. She has to be fed with a small cup instead of a bottle because she is too weak right now to suck out of a bottle. After helping with the first feeding for the day, we went and played with some of the older children downstairs before they had to go to preschool (the oldest, school-aged children left for school at 7:30 am). The kids just want to be held and played with all the time. One of the little boys Chris, who is about 4, is one of my favorites. He is very shy, and almost never talks. He just smiles and runs to me when he sees me so that I can pick him up. He is definitely a heartbreaker :)  Later that afternoon, one of the volunteers, Robert, showed us how to get to the atm and the supermarket so we could buy food. It was a long, dusty, and hot walk, but it was so good to get some food and water to keep in our room! Speaking of our room, this is what it looks like:

It's still a little messy, as I'm sure you can tell, but Whit is going to try and build a shelf out of scrap wood tomorrow. I will definitely be taking a picture of that lol. And at the top center of the bathroom picture is a shower. It's very interesting because it sprays everywhere & there's no water pressure, BUT praise God, because there is water and it is hot water. We are very blessed :)

It's still a little messy, as I'm sure you can tell, but Whit is going to try and build a shelf out of scrap wood tomorrow. I will definitely be taking a picture of that lol. And at the top center of the bathroom picture is a shower. It's very interesting because it sprays everywhere & there's no water pressure, BUT praise God, because there is water and it is hot water. We are very blessed :)

We played with the little ones for a few hours:

In the picture: Jonathan (over my head),  Jeff (left of me & wearing some of the new crocs we brought, yay!), Erica (right of me), Chris (sitting in my lap, with his back turned to the camera; he's the heartbreaker i mentioned above), Simon (in front of Chris), Jacob (in front of Simon), Precious (in front of Jacob), Melvin (in front of everyone :)), Prince (left of everyone), Andrew (standing up on the right).

And then with the school-aged children after they got home from school. They were very tiring, but so much fun. One of the little girls, Laya, speaks such good english for her age (6), and was answering all our questions for us. I would say "Laya, nani" ("Laya, who's/what's this"), and she would answer me. I think I know most of the names already thanks to her! She also loved doing my hair. She can be quite bossy, but she's so adorable! haha
 After playing with the older children, Whit went to go feed the kids in the one of the infant rooms, and I helped feed again in the isolation room, where Abba was doing a lot worse than in the morning. The "Mom" that was now there, Dorkus, thought that the baby needed oxygen and after Robert and myself listened to her lungs and her heartbeat we decided she really did, so she was taken to the hospital. Luckily she was just fine after some oxygen and is now back at Happy Life.
I made fried ocra and rice for our first dinner. I am going to have to get creative here without meat. Although it's amazing having such easy access to fresh fruit and veggies. These are our new friends that volunteer at HL with us, Kyle (left) and Robert (right):

& here is Whit enjoying our first dinner:

 

After dinner we showered and went straight to bed. You would not believe the amount of dirt one is able to accumulate on their body after just 1 day here. Crazy.
Well, here is where the jet-lag hits us... When I woke up I rolled over and asked Whit what time it was, and his was response was "don't get mad at me... It's 1 pm, but we needed the sleep!" I couldn't believe it. Today started a lot later so we didn't get to help quite as much but I know Whit was right. We really needed the sleep. We are off to do the 7:30 feeding for all the babes, but we will post again soon! Miss you all!

Jambo,
Max