Tumaini

Weighing In

On Thursday I had to fit in a number of tasks since we would not be able to come out on Saturday. One of the tasks I had to fit in was to weigh all of the children. Many of the children have a head fungus that will continue to spread unless we treat all of the children at the same time. Since we want to be careful about dosing, we had to be sure of each child's weight. I was able to use the scale in the food supply room to do this. The scale interchanges between kilograms and pounds, so it came in very handy. The kids enjoyed being weighed even though they had no clue what was going on. The only trouble I had was getting them to stand still and to keep the other children who were crowding around from putting their feet on the scale and causing a wrong reading.

One it is!

I'd like to introduce you to Emmanuel. He is 4 years old and was found in Igoma by the police. He was abandoned by his parent. The Igoma police brought him to the Mwanza police and then through Social Services and on to us. When I introduced myself to him and told him I was glad to meet him he got a big smile on his face. He seems to be a pretty happy child. He even smiled nicely for the picture, which doesn't always happen in the first couple of days. I look forward to getting to know Emmanuel better. 

One or Two?

On Tuesday afternoon I got a text message from Rob that we needed to leave Tumaini early. Social Services called for us to come pick up another child. Ferdinand sent Happy with us to be dropped off at the dala dala stand and then she would go the rest of the way into  town to pick the child up. All we knew at the time was that the child is 4 years old.

Today I went with Jana Eads and her children to have breakfast with Mama Stella. She had invited us on Sunday to come see her soon. I "asked" her over chapati and chai if she had met the new child and if it was a girl or boy. (Mama Stella works the night shift at Tumaini.) I think she said there were two children though I'm not totally sure about that. I'll have to find out tomorrow when we go out there. So it looks like we are back up to 40.... or.... 41.

A comedy in pictures

A friend of mine is helping me do a project with the children's pictures I took for the children's photo album on the website. Some of the pictures I originally took wouldn't work well for the project, so I worked on retaking some today. Boy, are those little kids squirmy and it didn't help that the other children would cluster around me to see the picture being taken. As a result of their crowding, when I finally got a great shot, one of them would bump my arm. Here we go again!

There were several "good" one's to choose from, but Frank's retakes were the "best."

     

I just kept snapping away hoping to finally get a good one. After the "official" photo shoot, the children wanted me to keep taking pictures. I kept hearing "na mimi!" meaning "and me!" I'll put some of those pictures in the recent pictures album.

Progress

Slowly but surely, we're making progress! On Wednesday, three student teachers arrived with their teaching materials to begin nursery school next week. I have to say, on Wednesday, October 15, I was a bit discouraged about how we would get our younger children into nursery school. The first errand of that day, to Starehe, had gone well, but we were met with the roadblock of transportation. There was no conceivable way to get 17 children to Starehe everyday. Next disappointment was the Montessori center. They had no teachers for us to hire - not even student teachers. As Ferdinand and I walked down the hill from the Montessori center, I said to him that God was going to have to make a way for this to work out since none of our efforts appeared to bring any solutions. Little did I know that God was working out a solution! Apparently, as a result of our visit to the Montessori center, they found 3 student teachers who could come to work with our children. Isn't God good?!

Yesterday, George the carpenter and a helper came out to install the towel rods in the children's rooms. By the end of the day, most of the rods were installed and ready to be used. We got all the towels arranged and spread out to make sure they fit. The kids were really excited about seeing them up and seeing their towels hanging there. They all wanted to help hang their towels. Next week I'll work on putting their names over their "spot." And, no surprise to those of you who work with children or have ones of your own, I was already having to rebuke one of the boys for standing/hanging on the bar. The bars may not last long!

Back Sides

On Thursday of last week, Happy brought me a tub of clothes to look through and decide what was beyond repairing and what should be replaced. We hire Paulo, who also pastors in Sweya, to do most of our clothing repair for us. As you can see, some of the boys have worn out the backsides of their shorts. Happy and I had to wait until Tuesday of this week to go dig through the container again so we could find enough shorts and pants to fit our boys. The girls were a little easier to find clothes for!

Today was Elisha Epafule's last morning with us. The nurse, Odilia,  had to go to town with three of our children for their monthly hospital visit. A caregiver goes along with her to help with the children. Elisha joined them and was to be dropped off at Social Services to wait for his dad.

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

On Saturday, the Howell children brought their Spiderman kite out to the orphanage. It is very windy in Shadi so it is a great place for flying kites. I'm not sure if the Tumaini children have ever seen one before but they really enjoyed holding the kite and watching Rob try to fly it.

Tumaini Menu

In light of the store room post, I thought you might like to know what the menu is for the children.

Sunday

• Breakfast - Uji Kikombe (cup of gruel) and Yai (egg)
• Lunch - Rice, Beans and wedge of fruit (pineapple, papaya, banana, etc.)
• Dinner - Ugali (like cream of wheat but with corn) and Chicken

Monday

• Breakfast - Chai and Chapati (thick, greasy tortilla)
• Lunch - Rice, beans and wedge of fruit
• Dinner - Ugali and Dagaa (small dried fish)

Tuesday

• Breakfast - Chai and Maandazi (fried bread dough)
• Lunch - Rice, beans and wedge of fruit
• Dinner - Ugali and Fish

Wednesday

• Breakfast - Chai and Chapati
• Lunch - Rice, beans and wedge of fruit
• Dinner - Ugali and Nyama (animal meat - goat, cow, pork, etc.)

Thursday

• Breakfast - Uji Kikombe and Yai
• Lunch - Rice, beans and wedge of fruit
• Dinner - Ugali and Dagaa

Friday

• Breakfast - Chai and Maandazi
• Lunch - Rice, beans and wedge of fruit
• Dinner - Ugali and Fish

Saturday

• Breakfast - Chai and Chapati
• Lunch - Beans and cooked bananas
• Dinner - Ugali and Dagaa

Store room

Another project that I am undertaking is tracking of the food. In order to do that more effectively, we decided to move the clothing room and use that room for food storage. (I'm sure all of you who have helped with the clothing room in some way are cringing at this sentence - your efforts did not and are not going unappreciated!) On Tuesday, I put the clothes back in bins and moved them to the 'reception room' off of my office since I never use it. Then Happy helped me clean out all the dust and dirt so we could get the food moved in. Thankfully, Ferdinand, Augustini and Rob lent a hand since there were some very heavy bags and buckets!

  The plan is to try pre-measuring and pre-bagging all the ingredients that are needed each day so that we can make the food last for a longer period of time. Ferdinand has a scale he kept in his office that he would use to weigh the food every day. Now that the food room is separate and kept locked, we can leave the scale set up all the time.

Thursday was my first day working on a whole week's worth of rice and beans. That's the only meal I could dole out because I ran out of shopping bags. I felt a little like I was a pioneer from Little House on the Prairie- measuring out my food from large buckets and bins. It was kind of fun (hopefully I'll still be saying that in a month!).

Visitors

On Thursday, Happy and I walked to the local clinic to try and get some malaria medication that would be better for the children. On the way, I tried out some of my newly memorized Kiswahili vocabulary and formulating sentences. Happy was a good sport.

It took us about an hour to take care of our errand and as we were walking back it was almost time for lunch. We took a shortcut into the orphanage property and as we neared the office area, we saw some visitors were entering the property. Kaduwe was returning from school and opened the gate for them. They were on a cherry red motorcycle and wearing red helmets - they made quite the picture. The lady was Manon from Canada. She has been in TZ for a year and a half. She is working on opening a children's home as well. She and her friend were out visiting the many orphanages around Mwanza to get some information and inspiration. After we talked to Rob for a while, I took them on a tour of the orphanage and the farm. They were very complimentary of all that has been accomplished in the last two years. It was very encouraging to hear their praise and to make another contact.