Tumaini

Asante, Mrs. Irma Russell Family and Friends

This is Rob.

Beth is on a well-deserved holiday in the USA right now. I may drop by here once or twice for a post while she is in the States. The Tumaini children are on a break from school until mid-January, when they all will be advancing to the next grade. During their time off, like other children in the neighborhood, they are helping out with extra chores on the farm. My children have enjoyed pitching in as well.

I’d like to take a moment to thank the family and friends of Mrs. Irma Russell. Mrs. Russell recently went to be with the Lord, and her family requested that memorials given in her honor be donated to Tumaini. Thank you for honoring Mrs. Russell by considering all these 51 littles souls and their daily needs.

Wednesday 18 November

I'm sure if you have read this blog for a long enough time, you have figured out that I get behind on posts, often. : D I do apologize for the dearth of posts recently. Between coming back from vacation, payroll, Ferdinand's surgery and moving to my new apartment at Tumaini, I've had a difficult time getting everything that needs to be done, finished. I debated about just doing a quick catch-up post, versus going back and posting about each individual happening. There have been so many things recently, as you can see from the previous posts that I just couldn't seem to manage one catch-up post. I hope you enjoy what I've reported about from the last few weeks!

Tuesday 17 November – New Hat

I have posted before about how the children create toys and other things out of scraps of this and that. I still marvel at their creativity every time I see a new manifestation of it. Recently, the older children have made a hat out of copper wires. At one point it, when I saw it, it looked like it was a baseball cap complete with a cap bill. Now it kind of looks like a horse-riding hat, like jockeys wear. I had Calista model it for me.

Sunday 15 November – Children’s Church

I rejoiced today that I could help with the children during the morning church service, but that I didn't have to substitute for someone afterwards. The nurse was not here, so Happyness and I were making sure the medicine was administered to the children. I took care of the antibiotic and she took care of everything else. Our count today was 10 taking the syrup and 3 taking the capsule. I think we had 15 total this past week who had developed the strand of strep throat. We walked up with the children and were the first one's into the church building. Ferdinand sat them all down and listed out what behavior he expected of them. I was glad he and Happyness were back because I didn't know he did this on Sundays. (Last Sunday, Jana told me that one of the older girls brought a mango into church and was parceling it out during the service – I let Ferdinand know so he could remind them not to be eating during church). I sat with Yakobo because he had been sick all night and hadn't slept. We had given him antibiotic and already his temperature was coming down. He slept in my arms the whole service.

Last week, I had anticipated there would be a children's service once the adult service began but there wasn't. I figured it was because of some of the confusion with Ferdinand being absent. But this week, when it came time to dismiss the children, nothing happened. Most of the children were pretty restless and started picking at one another, which I'm not surprised about. Then there were the others who said they were going to the bathroom and never came back.

I left the service early because Yakobo started whimpering and becoming restless. I walked back to the orphanage and as I got closer, I saw one of the children hanging out in the kibanda. Then I heard voices and I walked around until I found where they were coming from. I looked up in the trees and saw three of our girls climbing. I told them to go back to the church service (one of them was the one who said she was going to the bathroom : D). I put Yakobo down in his bed and then waited on the porch for everyone else to return.

I talked to Ferdinand about the need for children's church later in the day. I'm hoping we can come up with a good solution that will help the children to be encouraged and engaged on Sundays, as well as the adults getting uninterrupted time to listen to the sermon.

Saturday 14 November – Group #1

One of the boundaries for the Tumaini children, with the Eads, Howells and me living at Tumaini, is that they should only come to our houses when they have been invited. The only exception is if I am on call and a worker needs me for something, then they are permitted to send one or two children to fetch me. We aren't setting this boundary to be cruel, but to keep life organized and clear for both the team and the children. The children are wonderful, curious and energetic. If they could, they would camp out at our houses 24/7, because they want to play with the Eads/Howell kids or just to see what we are doing. That's not healthy for them or us. So, as a team, we decided that it would be good to invite a group of children down to our houses once a week for at least an hour. And conversely, the Howell/Eads kids will spend some time each day playing up at the Tumaini house with the kids. Hopefully, these things will satisfy the curiosities and desires of the children.

Today we started with the youngest children – the older children, Ferdinand and I agreed on this. We had 12 of them over to the Eads front porch. First we gathered them together at the orphanage and gave them the "rules." Then we walked down together, the children excitedly chattering the whole way. We assembled them on the steps for a picture. Then, Dan and Jana brought out the legos and building blocks. The kids had a great time playing with these new (to them) toys. They would build something and then bring it over to Dan, Jana or me for inspection. The Eads also had a plastic jungle-gym play set that had come just that day with a truck of items being moved from the Sweya property. The little kids really enjoyed swarming all over it. (As a side note, the swing set from Sweya came out on the truck today and before I saw it coming, I could hear the Tumaini kids loudly giving an excited cheer about it. They already have one but they were still excited to see another one coming. : D). After a while, the Eads brought out little bags of peanuts for each child and there was orange soda pop as well. There was much smacking of lips to be heard! The only real discipline issue of the play time was when the little children would walk to the edge of the porch or over to the fence and taunt the older children who were working in the garden. They might hold out a toy they were playing with and shake it in the children's direction and pronounce something. Ferdinand had warned the children about their behavior towards each other but I don't think he anticipated this particular behavior. He encouraged all of them to be happy for those who get to go since they know that they would also get a turn. He has also warned against the other children "punishing" those who had gotten to go first because they were jealous. It amused me that the youngest children were the ones taunting the oldest children. We tried to nip that attitude in the bud.

Friday 13 November – Town Trip

Since we had a Sekoutoure clinic trip today, we also combined it with returning Helena to the Social Services office. We arrived at Social Services first and before Helena and I got out of the car, Dan Eads prayed for her and her return to her family. I was really glad we were able to do that. I left her with the social worker, gave her a hug and then headed back to the car. We dropped the Sekoutoure clinic people off and headed into town to tend to our errands. Before we left town this time, we tried stopping at a pharmacy to get Juma's haloperidol medication. Unfortunately, the pharmacy only had 8 tablets. I think I've hit every pharmacy in town and no one has haloperidol anymore. I'll have to find a new strategy!

Thursday 12 November – Kwa Heri, Helena

Since the incident with Helena and the stolen money in the middle of September, we had written a letter to Social Services detailing what had happened during the incident and that Helena was requesting to be sent to her relatives in Bunda. We received word from Social Services at the beginning of October that they had found her relatives and could return her to them if we provided the payment for return costs. We weren't able to make her return happen in October and we finally have figured out that tomorrow will work best for us and Social Services.

Tonight, I went up at 6 p.m. to hang out with the kids and observe what the evening was like with Ferdinand and Happyness back. Ferdinand had a meeting time with all the children. They gathered in the kibanda and we sat waiting to hear what he would talk about. He told the children that Helena would be leaving in the morning, and that if they wanted to say good-bye to her, they should make sure to do so before she left in the morning. He then gave me an opportunity to say something to her and he would translate it for me. I haven't really had a chance to do that with any of the other children we've sent home. I was really glad Ferdinand thought of it. I told her that I was thankful that she had been at Tumaini. That I pray for her now and will continue to pray for her when she leaves – especially that she would receive the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior and that she would learn to live for Him and to do His will in her life.

With Helena's departure our current total is 51 children.

Wednesday 11 November – Staff Meeting & Returns

We had some interesting things happen at Tumaini today. One was the return of Babu (grandfather), or Augustini. The children called him "babu" when he was working here. He stopped working here at the end of July. Today he came walking to Tumaini with some paperwork that we needed to fill out for him. The children let out a yell when they saw him (they were all home from school today because of testing going on) and ran to walk with him as he entered. I commented to him that they were rejoicing to see him – I'm pretty sure he said, "I don't know why." That comment made me laugh.

We also had a staff meeting right before lunch. Since the Eads and I have made the move out to Tumaini, with the Howells soon to follow, it was a good time to cover the boundaries and expectations with the staff, concerning the children. It was a good meeting and I think things were clearly laid out. We'll find out soon enough anyway!

Ferdinand and Happyness also returned today. We were expecting Ferdinand yesterday but he was unable to be released from the hospital until today. We all went up to his house, where he was sitting outside on a bench in the shade and greeted him. We sat there talking and little groups of children would come up when they heard he had returned and sit with him, greeting him and then playing while he shared stories from the hospital. It is really great to have him and Happyness back.

Tuesday 10 November – Dentist Visits Finished

Today finishes our dentist visits to town, which we began in June or July. I took 6 boys, along with a caregiver, in to Mwanza to have their teeth checked. I left them there so I could run some Tumaini errands, one being to buy a large supply of antibiotic syrup! Apparently, this dentist didn't see any particular problems with their teeth because when I came back 2 hours later they were all waiting for me to return. I was very surprised but glad. The boys seemed to have had a good experience. I didn't see any tears this time.

Monday 9 November – Slight Contagion

It appears we have a slight epidemic going through the children at Tumaini. It started with Helena several weeks ago when she had an enlarged gland in her throat which puffed up the area to her ear. We gave her antibiotic and it went away. Then on my moving day last week, Zena also had an enlarged gland and she was running a fever. Rob checked her over and we decided to also administer antibiotic. On Saturday, Daudi came to me, because the nurse had already left, and complained that he was sick. He also had an enlarged gland and running a fever. He also received an antibiotic. On Sunday night, the caregiver brought me to Ndebile #1 and showed me that he was running a fever. I gave him fever reducer because he didn't have the enlarged gland (yet). This morning the nurse came to me and said that Ndebile now had the enlarged gland as well as 2 other boys. Unfortunately, we only had antibiotic capsules and no syrup. We will have to wait until tomorrow when I go to town to get enough syrup for these three children.

I spoke to Rob about it this morning and he had gotten some information from a doctor friend in town. Apparently, it's a form of strep throat and is very contagious. I expect now that with 5 total children so far on the medicine, we may have many more before this is over!