Picture Update

Daniel, wearing a girl's sunglasses

I had a bad day a few days ago and decided it was time to bust out the Ghiradelli 60% cocoa caramel filled dark chocolate that my mom hide in my bag. Oh...it was heavenly. Thanks Mom!!

Patience. Is she not the most adorable thing?!

Krista, a volunteer from Kentucky, left a few days ago. We had a goodbye pj party with/for her. From left to right is Evie (my Aussie roommate), Krista, Ruth (who is from England) and myself.

This is Laura, a volunteer from Australia, and me in the rocking chairs outside Baby Watoto. There are now 34 volunteers here (yes, THIRTY FOUR) so they have PLENTY of time to just cuddle babies through out the day (I'm with Daniel and Patience, so it has made not much of a difference to my daily schedule). Anyways, Patience is sick so I have been just holding and rocking her lately, and Laura and some others have been able to join me in the cuddle time.

Fried Green Tomatoes...er, Grasshoppers

I had quite the eventful afternoon yesterday...it's not a very exciting story, but it ends with arriving "home" at 6:30. SIX THIRTY!!! My shift was done at 3:30. Ugh! But, to make the trip home somewhat exciting, I decided to finally buy some fried grasshoppers from someone selling on the side of the road. We paid 200 schillings per spoonful and got 5 spoonfuls. Which was more than enough for all of us (20 or so) to eat many.

Now, earlier in my blog, I had mentioned how the grasshoppers here were about 4 inches long. Which they are. However, the fried ones are much smaller. Before the grasshoppers are fried, their wings and legs are plucked off and their wings make up most of their body length. So the ones I ate were only about an inch long.

We (my roommates and I) brought them up for dinner to share with everyone as an after-dinner treat. After finishing our meal, we began to pass the bag around for everyone to take a look/whiff of our dessert. Just as we were about to dig-in, a live grasshopper flies through the window!! At the guesthouse that Jenna and I were staying at initially, there were bugs EVERYWHERE (mainly grasshoppers.) But here, I have only seen 2 cockroaches. A couple
of nights ago, I was telling one of my roommates, Evie, how thrilled I was to not have to see grasshoppers anymore. Sure enough, the moment we are about to crunch into a grasshopper, one comes to haunt me.

Goodness. Needless to say, I freaked out. We had to move our little adventure to the balcony off of my (well, our) room. Anyways, the grasshoppers were pretty good. They tasted kind of like
shrimp...or grease. Hahaha. They weren't nasty though. I actually ate quite a few.

Pictures of My Room

Here are the pictures of my "new" room. It's all girls living there and we don't have a wardrobe of any kind so that's why there are clothes everywhere!!


1. This is the view walking in the door. That's Evie in the pink on her bed and Lauren in the back corner, on her bed.
2. We pushed Marianne and mine's beds together to make more room. So we basically share a really huge bed, but still have our individual nets. It's funny.
3. My bed is the one closer to the wall, behind Marianne.
4. Our balcony, which is very useful after hand washing clothes :)

New Roomies!!

Another change that I can now blog about is that 2 weeks ago, Jenna left to return home. She had to take a summer class in order to receive her scholarship from Grand Valley. I thought I would be lonely without her, but I've been just fine. Like I said before, I moved down to a room down the hall with 2 other volunteers, Marianne and Evie. Things have been GREAT with them; I'm loving getting to know them! Last night (Saturday night), we had a new volunteer arrive. Her name is Lauren. She is from British Columbia, but has spent the last 6 months studying in Norway. She is going to move into the open bed in our 4-bed room. I'm thrilled!!

I'm also getting closer to the other volunteers, which is great! I think now that I don't have a friend here to lean on, I'm more open to getting to know other people. I know my last two weeks here are going to be fantastic as I continue to get to know my roommates and the other volunteers!!!

It took too long for the pictures to load...I'll try and get them up next time. Arrugh, so frustrating!

Recent Adventures

On the weekends, shifts either end early or start late. Since we were on the morning shift this week, we got done a few hours early on Saturday. All of us who either had the day off or were on morning shift headed out to Speke Resort. This is an absolutely beautiful 5 star resort on Lake Victoria. We paid $10 to lay by the pool and swim for the day. It was sooo nice. At sunset, we walked along Lake Victoria (the sun wasn't setting over the lake, that's just the time we went). It was a great day!

Sunday was my day off (along with Marianne, Evie, Harrison and Krista). All of us, along with Laura and Ruth, who are working the later shift, and a new volunteer, Laura headed to....THE EQUATOR!!! It was a rough start; took us a while to find a ride there and such, and it was kind of expensive but it was SO FUN!! We took many pictures, bought some cheesy touristy tee-shirts. Hahaha, we had a blast!!

Pictures:
1. This is part of the Speke Resort gang...from left to right: Becky, Me, Rachel, Harrison (Jesus?) and John. Becky, Rachel and John are siblings. John is really goofy...that hat fits him. Hahaha.
2. The roommates at the equator...from left to right: Lauren, Me, Marianne and Evie.

And They're Off

One of the changes that I wasn't allowed to talk about was the move to village. This past Friday, 26 of the "babies" moved to the Watoto Bbira village. There was a lot of preparation involved. First, all the children that were moving all took a day trip to the village. This was to make the adjustment to their new home once they moved a little easier, to make positive memories of the village. We also put together bags for each of the children, which included clothes, eating utensils, toiletries, toys, books, blanket, etc. We shaved some of their heads, depending on how much hair they had (apparently it's easy for the newcomers to get ringworm when they first get to the village, so they shave their heads so they can discover and treat it as soon as possible.) And we had all of the girls' ears pierced. This is a safety precaution because once their ears are pierced they are considered "scarred" and they wouldn't be a target for abduction for sacrifice (crazy, I know!) Lastly, we took a lot of toddlers on a final "day out" to play in the yard at Serena's. I took
Miles, and he was extremely difficult. Haha. It was still enjoyable though.

The actual move was very exciting and sad. Many of the nannies and volunteers were crying. It is exciting to see these children "moving up" though, knowing they are continuing on the path to a fantastic future! Now that they are gone, the place seems EMPTY!! There are only 19 children left in the upper 3 rooms so playtime out on the playground is incredibly quiet. It's....very strange. They are going to "even it out" soon (move some of the kids from the younger rooms up), which will also be very strange.

Pictures:
1. This is from our last "day out"; Matthew is on the left in the red and Miles is on the right.
2. Vicki's newly pierced ear.
3. This is Grace, post head-shaving.
4. This is Krista, a volunteer from Kentucky, who helped put together the bags.
5. This after one of the groups returned from a village visit...eating lunch before nap time.

Even more changes...

This week, John and Becky's family joined all of us at Adonai 6; Dewey and Debbie, their parents, (Dewey is a GV grad :) ) and Rachel, their 17 year old sister. It's nice to have them around, and they have temporarily adopted me into their family. Dewey has continued his fatherly role and pays for practically everything...ice cream outings, transportation and such. It's nice :)

We also had another volunteer join us, Harrison, who is from Atlanta. He is pretty chill and is a great addition to our little guest house team. He is really outdoorsy, has a massive ball of curly hair on his head, and rarely showers. Haha. He will be here for 4 weeks, and then is going to Jinja for 2 weeks to work with "Pennies for Pasha", an organization that provides pasha for orphans. Pasha is tastes and feels like play-doh, with less salt. It is not appetizing, but is filling
(apparently, I wouldn't know because I never eat enough of it.)

We also got 2 new babies, in addition to Daniel and Patience. One of them is a preemie, from the nearby hospital, who was found in a toilet. Her name is Nellie. Another was found abandoned in a building and is malnourished. His name, unfortunately, is Alfie. They say he is nine months old, but he appears to be much older than that. Once he is healthy, the baby home is planning to re-evaluate him and see if they can better identify his true age. Alfie is absolutely adorable. He is
extremely smiley and loves to giggle.
The picture above is of him.

Lucky, the baby I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, also left us this week. I don't know all the details, but I believe his mother is now allowed to have him in her custody. Watoto is going to stay in contact with her to be sure he is being properly taken care of. It was sad to see him go, but it's obviously good for a child to be with his mother.

All of these changes puts the count of babies at 101. We were discussing this over dinner last night...The Bulrushes was built to hold 60 babies with a maximum capacity at 75. Haha. I can't even imagine this place with only 60 babies!! It's not that they can't take as good of care of the babies when there is more than 75, it's just that their budget is meant for only 60 babies. So with 101, the money is definitely wearing thin and fast! But God will provide, and He has.

I also have two new roommates, Mary Ann and Evie. They have been here for 3 weeks and were living in a 4 bed room room down the hall. Adonai 6 has a group of 38 coming in this week, so they needed to do as much condensing as possible. Needless to say having 2 people in a 4 bed room is silly.

Prayer Requests: That I will have the strength and energy to give my all at work, that I wouldn't be missing the giraffe room while working with Daniel and Patience