Zorash does not come back from her vacation until tomorrow. She went to a funeral of a dear friend of hers. The lady was sick for a long time; she had cancer but the family did not want to tell her that she had cancer so she was roaming from one hospital to another until finally one of the nurses told her that she had cancer. Here in Ghana they do not want to tell you the truth about your health because they are afraid that it will make you too sad and do something crazy. Maybe an HIV patient would try to infect as many people as they possible could! A couple weeks ago we sent a baby that was more than 6 months old to Tamale because the baby could not hold up his head. He had no use of the muscles in his neck; he could not sit and he had no use of his hands. The doctors at Tamale told the mother that she should take the baby home and treat him with “local” medicine. Local medicine consists of bathing with herbs, cutting, and wearing talismans; how is that going to help him.
This morning the severely malnourished 7 month old little boy came back to the Child Center. He came 2 weeks ago and we loaded him up with weaning mix and vitamins. Steve had given the mother lots of education as how to feed the little guy and we had hoped to see a weight gain but he lost even more weight; today he only weighed 7 ½ pounds. Some babies are born weighing more than 7 ½ pounds. Steve wrote a referral letter for the mother to take to the hospital. Sometimes when a child’s weight gets so low infections, fevers and other problems do not show up. Steve wanted to make sure that a doctor saw him just to be sure everything was being done for him that needed to be done.
We went back to Tamale this afternoon in hopes that the Registrar General had signed our paper work but he had not. He said that he would not sign it until tomorrow because he had been out of the office for 2 days and he was behind. We decided to proceed with “Plan B”. The auditor had a copy of the audit so we picked up the copy and the paper work for the IRS. We do not have to have the original as long as we have a copy. We were happy to get something to turn into the IRS because tomorrow is the deadline.
We picked up a couple receipts from the computer shop and headed back to Yendi. We got back in time to take a couple used wooden doors out to Kulkpeni. Timothy Niligrini wants one and we are going to give the other one to Kyee; one of the church members that is deaf. He just built a new mud ball house. Well, he built 2 rooms; neither have doors.
We are happy that we did not have to spend the night in Tamale. Have a good day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
