New Friends

Sunrise:
As usual its been a busy time at Sunrise! Lots of work to be done in the shamba (farm). This time of year we are working with the corn and getting ready to plant the wheat. I took the kids to work with the corn; pilling the dirt around the plants. It's hard but rewarding work, and its fun to do go with the kiddos.

On Sunday i got out a few gifts from my Aunt Connie for the kids. One was a bubble maker thing and the other is those balloons you fill up and let go and they make noise. The kids were so entertained. The bubbles were the biggest hit, and the village kids that come on SUndays to play football loved them as well. I always love seeing how the simplest things to us make them so happy.

I have been playing some soccer games with the boys lately. PLaying in a skirt is next to impossible so i am going to take a pair of pants to leave at site for some intense football playing.

A common thing in Tanzania is that if you ate a certain kind of food one time and got sick then you are allergic. We have lots of the kids who had various allerigies when they first arrived (meat, milk) and now are able to eat them. Well, every Tuesday the kids have sphaghetti. Over the Winter break (June) the kids all went home to their families. One of the girls had pasta and got sick so she was allergic to pasta and could no longer eat it. So then every Tuesday at Site they were ng to cook a seperate meal for her. Unfortunately she is one of our kids whose mother's is suffering from HIV, which means that whenever she gets back from being at her mom's we have to get her tested (once a year). Its a simple finger prick, one drop of blood and done. I took her a couple of weeks ago and you would have thought theytook a whole gallon of blood, it was the end of the world. She is one of our more dramatic children and she really played it up. I was thinking about her pasta allergy and how we coudl get her to eat it again, and an idea came to me. (Possibly cruel, possibly brilliant.) I told her that i was concerned she was not able to eat pasta and so i wanted to take her to get some blood drawn so we could see why she was allergic to pasta; OR she could try pasta today and see if maybe now she could eat it. That night she ate pasta and she told Carina (the volunteer at site) "Thank you, now i love pasta!" Problem solved.

Aiden:

Aiden was weighing in at 8.3 Kilos (which according to google is about 18.2 LBS) at the beginning of the month. He is also 27 inches long now. He is trying to pull himself up now, and most of the time is successful. He is also working on crawling, which he has mastered in reverse, wokring on going forward. He gets on his hands and knees and starts moving in place really fast but hasn't figured out how to move his hands. He still only has the two teeth, but i think he is about to cut some more. He eats just about everything he is given except for watermelon; it must be a family thing to hate watermelon (on his dad's side) because both Sifeli and Luka won't eat it.

Aiden also loves to play in the dirt- typical boy. He has recently started to play with his cousins on the ground and even if i place him on a blanket he will move the blanket so he can reach the ground underneath.

Village:

Someone from home donated a bag of chapstick one time and i brought it over. I took a few out to use because i get chapped lips from the sun sometimes. Luka saw me using it one day and mentioned that our sister in law (the oldest brother's wife) really needs some. So I gave him one to give to her. He came back and said that she is was thanking God for the chapstick. For chapstick. They always teach me so much here about what it really means to appreciate things, and what it means to thank God for everything, even the little stuff like chapstick. So to the person who donated the chapstick, someone in Africa is thanking God for you.

We have two new adorable additions to our home, KITTENS! Hopefully they will get rid of those pesky rats that try to come in every once in awhile. PLus they are horrible.

I am often reminded that I am not a typical village wife. The two girls that work at site and I were talking about husbands one day. I told them that Sifeli comes home around 7 or 8 every night (aroudn the same time i return home), and that him and Luka help cook. They couldn't believe it. Most husbands come home aorund 11 or 12 at night or later, and they expect there to be food ready for them and waiting when they do return.

There was a funeral this past weekend for a cousin of Sifeli's. She was living in DAR but came home to stay with her mom because she had been having heart problems. They gave her some medicine but she refused to take it. She passed away around 3AM Saturday morning. Saturday was a busy day for the funeral and spending time with family. I wasn't able to go to site due to family obligations, and also everyone kept taking Aiden, I didnt want to go to far away. SO by the end of the day we are both exhausted. I didnt feel liek cooking and i wasnt sure what Sifeli was doing as far as the funeral stuff, so i went and bought myself a chipsi mayai (french fries and egg). I only bought one and there was this woman in there asking what Sifeli was going to do for dinner. I made a joke about how he is a grown man and is capable of cooking his own meal or buying it. She just looked at me with this shocked expression and the lady who was cooking my meal couldnt stop laughing. The poor helpless men in this village would apparently starve if they all had wives like me.

Feeding Program:
We had the baby clinic and Carina (our volunteer from Austria) and I attended. I wrote down all the babies weights, age, and names. There were around 150 or so kids aged 0-5years. (That's a lot of young people in uhekule.) I will be meeting with the doctor this weekend to discuss who needs what and then we will go from there.