Mr. Iddrisu’s sister died yesterday. She has been sick for a while. Of course no one knows why she died or what she died of; she had to have several blood transfusions. This morning we went to the market and bought 200 pounds of shelled field corn which they will use to make TZ, sort of like a very stiff corn meal mush, and 100 pounds of rice. After the Child Center closed we loaded up the workers and the grain and went to visit Mr. Iddrisu. We added some money to the gift so they would have something to buy soup ingredients. As we were getting ready to leave the family gave us a gift of 10 Cedis (about 2 dollars). They said that it was their tradition to give the giver something as a “thank you” for the gift we gave. That was very sweet! Mr. Iddrisu’s neighbor lost his mother last week and they were doing the final funeral today so we sent a monetary gift to that funeral too.
This morning 59 children came to the Child Center. The set of triplets came back but they are not gaining the way we want them to gain so Steve invited them to come back next Monday instead of waiting to come back in 2 weeks. We also had a new baby come today that was tongue tied. We sent them over to the clinic to have his tongue clipped but they refused to do it because they said he was too small. It was not that he was too small; it was that he was too weak. They told them to take him to the big hospital to have it done. Meanwhile he will just get weaker if he cannot breastfeed so we taught the mother how to express her milk into a small cup and cup feed the baby. We hope that she goes ahead and gets his tongue clipped. Her husband came to the Center with her so he is aware of what needs to be done.
Timothy’s older daughter Abigail got stung by a scorpion yesterday. She said that she had laid her clothes on the floor and one had crawled into the sleeve of her shirt and when she put it on it stung her. Timothy said that he has been stung more than 50 times. He said that when he was a child he would get stung all the time. We asked him what he was doing to get stung so many times. He said because he slept on the floor with only a small grass mat the scorpions would be come to the mat and he would roll over on them in the night. He said that one time one stung him on the side and woke him up and before he could get up it stung him on his buttock! I cannot imagine! The ones we have here are more painful than deadly. They are only really dangerous to small babies. But Divine says they are deadly to pigs.
When Amama came to work today she was all apologies because she did not come to work on Thursday. She said she thought that it was a 2 day holiday.
Take care and thank you for all you do for us and for the work.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
