Arrival of Blessing

Today the new baby, Blessing, arrived. She is 7 months old and weighs only about 9 pounds - the almost 3 month old who’s been here 2 months is considerably bigger! It sounds like the 7 month old has been losing weight rather than gaining for the past two months. Everything I said yesterday about AIDS in Africa is true - the only thing we found out different today is that the very thin little mother wasn’t raped (the original story we got) but had sex with her boyfriend and had no idea she could get pregnant from doing that. She didn’t even realize she was pregnant until they told her she had to go home from school because the teachers could tell she was. I suspect with her parents dead and her HIV positive widowed aunt being overwhelmed by trying to take care of 10 kids including the little mom and her baby, 5 of her own and 3 of her brother’s orphaned children, nobody had bothered to tell little mother how babies are made. Little mother got pregnant when she was 14. Now she’s in the 5th grade, having missed a few years of schooling for lack of school fees. Such a tragedy!

Kate called the 12 year old and older girls together this evening to tell them Blessing’s story and talk them about the importance of not letting the boys talk them into anything that would result in their ending up in Blessing’s mother’s situation - and bringing a baby into the world that they are not prepared to take care of.

I didn’t write anything on Saturday, but I should tell you about Kate’s day. One weekend a month she supposedly takes two days off. This past weekend was the one. However, she had three secondary school girls home from St. Martins, their boarding school, because each had medical or dental issues. One had to have a root canal and one had a toothache that is apparently due to gum problems so they both had to spend time at the dentist. The third has had ongoing stomach pain issues and needed to go to the hospital for blood tests. We had to go by the home of one of the Kenyan trustees to take her the papers that had to be delivered to an employee who had been let go. One of the girls with dental issues is also suffering headaches and needed to go to the eye doctor for an exam. We also needed to pick up mail from the post office and go to the bank. Kate had planned to spend the day and the night at a retreat center, but ended not getting away from Hekima Place until 4 PM. That lady really needs for us to get an assistant director hired!