Monday 5th November

Today was a very EXCITING start to the week.
Mary and I finally get a chance to sit down together to work on some computer work together and Marys phone rings. It is Doctor Kaleb from Piave Maternity Ward and there is a woman in labour!! (we are excited because it has just been built by ROTH and MIA and this will be the 2nd child born!) We literally drop what we are doing and run to the car. We are so exicted! Britney jumps in the car with us and i am taking deep breaths trying to contain myself and preparing for what i might see. (not great with blood and placentas etc.)

We arrived as quickly as we could (these roads through the village are bad) and we were a little too late. She had just finished. The baby was still attached and Dr K was just cutting the cord. Mary was in there and so excited, Britney and I were a little more hesitant, standing back and just peeking around the corner. The baby was so adorable and mother was doing fine. It was her sixth child so i guess she is used to it and not as excited as we all were.
SO, this is our 2nd child born at the maternity ward and i am sure many more as soon as it is actually up and running and has electricity.

Great news on Cecelia. Mary and Ivan have hired her to work for MIA full time and she is living in one of our mud huts on the property. She is one happy lady.

Some of our Canadian visitors and Sweet, Sore Ashley left for Mombassa today... I hope you have fun girls! Wish i could come along... maybe next year for me ;-)

Ashley, Michelle, Britney, Arienne, Martha, Shannon and Me.

Brand New Baby Agnes Wangiru (5 minutes old)

Mama, SIster and Baby

The ladies on the potty ... he he .. so cute...

Tuesday 6th November

Most of my day today was spent on the computer gettig through alot of work. It seems to be never ending. Once i completer one project another comes up... but it is great that i am here to do it and we are getting through ALOT.

In the afternoon Mary, Martha and I set off into town as we had a meeting with 'Talent Africa' It is a new project that is happening where they are taking select children from childrens homes and orphanages around Nakuru and put them in a talent show type thing where they can show off their skills in dancing, comedy, crafts, cat walk ;-) etc...

We have a bunch of very talented children so there is no doubt in my mind that we will win the whole compettion HANDS DOWN.

 

Wednesday 7th November

A couple of months ago a sweet little girl called 'Warimu' was refered to us. Her father was very sick with AIDS and wanted her to go somewhere so she could have a better future.

Today we took little Warimu to see her father as we wanted to see how he was doing. We also wanted to get all Warimu's paper work and find out when she was born etc (we still do not know how old she is)
Warimu was very excited to be heading out for the day and didnt know which window of the car to look out of as there was just so much going on for her.
We arrived to the house that Warimu used to live in and asked for her father. We were told 'that man is dead' 'he is buried'
It seems that he died not long after we took Warimu into our home. He must have known that he was very close to death as he was pushing for Warimu to be taken.

Normally when a child first comes to us, they have seperation anxiety for the first week they are here and go through a stage of depression. Not Warimu, she was very happy when she first came and then after a week or two she went into her 'silent grieving' and was very depressed for a while. She is now doing so well and joining in singing with us, laughing and playing well. She could not walk when she came to us and is now walking very well on her own. She is a beautiful, shy little girl.

Warimu is too young to understand what happened today.
She seemed very happy and enjoyed her day out with the big girls.
One day we will tell her the story and she will know that her Dad did his very best for her.

The room Warimu and her Dad lived in

Mary and Warimu (and neighbour!) outside her old house

Looking onto Warimu's old house

Thursday 8th November

Busy at the computer most of the day... Mary, Ivan and I are working on a proposal for a company to see if we can get funding for some projects we want to complete.
Its quite a process as I have no idea what i am doing and make it up as i go along but thats how i do most things in my life and it always seems to work out well ;-)

One of our visitors, Britterz (haha is that right britney?) has gone now and we all miss her so much! come back soon please. I will see you in lennox sister.

I had to include this photo in todays entry as i love it so much. This is our sisters Lucy and Sophie. They were both badly abused and we took in Lucy to MIA first. Sophie came about 1 month later. Sophie was severly abused and raped by her father at 8 months old. She now has HIV. This photo is of when Sophie came to us and saw her sister Lucy for the first time. She could not stop kissing her :-(

 

Friday 9th November & Saturday 10th November

Sorry for the delay with this entry! Friday was a big day for me.
The day started AOK until Mary mention that our baby of the house 'Purity' was not well. She had been up most of the night with diarrhoea and she was not eating properly (normally she is a great eater!!) Throughout the day her little face seemed to get greyer and more withdrawn. Mary was geting so worried as each moment went on so we decided to take her to the doctor. We rush into town and Purity is getting worse each minute at this stage. We get to the doctor and he is no where to be found, we cannot reach him on the mobile and we are told to wait 1/2 hour as he will be back but we know full well that half and hour kenyan time is more like 4 hours and we could not wait.
While we are in the doctors purity looks like she has stopped breathing, Mary and I though she had died and we both freaked out. We screamed for help and another doctor from elsewhere came to us pretty much straight away (they knew Mary meant business)
He came in and said we needed to get her to the hospital straight away and hooked up to IV as she is totally dehydrated.
Its not often you see Mary upset and when i did it terrified me as for her to be upset i knew it was serious. Mary has lost 2 other children previously and she said that it was reminding her of this too much.
We raced to the hospital and took her to Emergency they hooked her straight up to and IV and for a baby this small this was not easy. He little finger is smaller than my thumb nail and we dress her in dolls clothes that are too big for her.
The doctor then had to come and take some blood as we needed to check her HIV status as both her parents died and we think from Aids but are still unsure. Her arm is so small is was hard to find a vein and she was screaming and they had to prick her twice. My plan was to turn away as i could not bare to watch but the doctor asked me to hold the top of her arm and squeeze so we could get a vein. oh man, that was horrible. This little tiny baby, suffering so so much and i couldnt do a thing about it.
We had to watch her breathing so close as she was laying there with her eyes open, barely moving at all. It was just too close and too scary and i hope that i never have to be in such a situation ever ever again.
Mary stayed in hospital with her last night and i had to come straight home and go to bed as i was so emotionally exhausted. I slept 12 hours.
Purity is still at the hospital and will probably stay in for one more night depending on if her diarrhoea starts to improve. We will not take any risks, she is part of our family and we plan on having her around for a long long time.

Pictured ont he right is 'Mama Purity' aka Ashley. I am glad that she was not around yesterday and that she was still travelling from Mombassa as she would have not handled it well. After all, she is Mama Purity.

 

 

 

This is our lovely Samuel who must have been super tired today as he fell asleep in Shannons arms....

Sunday 11th November

WOWWWWEEEEEEEEE the drama is never ending!
I woke up this morning, did my exercises, had a shower and walk out my door to see Cecelia there. She said she was looking for me to say Good Bye. I asked 'why where are you going?' she advised me that the bed is too hard for her to make and she cant handle it (she was cleaning upstairs of the orphanage building) I asked her if she was kidding??? You would rather go and live on the streets and face being raped and beaten everyday because you are finding it too hard to make the bed?! She kept saying that it was too hard for her and she just cant get it right and it would be better for her to go back to the street. I was so mad with her and frustrated that this was what she was choosing. I kept saying 'so you would rather the streets of Nairobi than living here rent free with a job and people that love you' and she just kept saying that the bed is too hard to make.
I got Ivan and Martha, as I could not understand her reasoning... after lengthy discussion of her and us repeating everything over again we offered her work in the garden instead and then she advised that she had a sore chest and she could not work there.
No matter what we offered she would not help herself.
We told her that if she wanted to go then she could go ahead. She asked us for money but we reminded her that she was paid on Friday in which she replied 'I spent it on shoes' so Ivan gave her some money for her to leave with,
Upon leaving, when she was at the gate (our guard was going to escort her to town) she started to advise that she was fed up with all of us, and 'are you people stupid, do you think I am needy? Do you think I came from the streets? Do you think a person who is this clean comes from the streets? I am not needy! I have given birth! I have sons!' it was like she was crazy. She totally changed from the sweet, needy Cecelia to this devil in disguise!
She continued to argue with Martha in Kiswahili and started swearing at her and it looked like she would beat her but lucky our Masaais were close and stopped it.
It is a hard situation for everyone involved. All we did was try and help her and she basically kicked us in the teeth. As time goes on we are finding more and more out about her that she would go around the community telling everyone that she needed help and money and spreading bad stories about us. She got money from many volunteers including me!
Other staff mentioned that they have seen street people carry on like this before and it is most likely from her sniffing glue for many years. One minute she is good and the next very evil. and that was Cecelia today and MIA will not tolerate any such behaviour around our children. They come number 1 and we will not take risks.
Of course we do wish Cecelia well and in my heart I hope she is OK and will be safe but she made her own decisions and there is only so much you can do for a person.
If they don’t want to help themselves then it is out of your hands.

Purity came home from the hospital this afternoon and is looking so much better!!

Its time for water while playing in the playground... CHAOS!

Dinner time... I am in the back ground trying to teach little Sophie how to use her spoon!