Babies, Frustrations, Experiences, and Future Plans

Well I'll give everyone a little update on what is new, though it doesn't seem to be much, as i've pretty much adjusted and consider this home and go day by day about my new daily life.

This last weekend I was fairly lazy haha, Saturday we decided to go to Moshi which is a town about an hour or two away, and we really mostly just walked around and ate food...but the food was delicious and cheap as it always seems to be. We got to see an okay view of Kili, but i'd already seen it from Meru and I see it everyday that is clear from where the dala dala stops to drop me off at cradle. It was just a nice little day trip to get out of the house, and to get out of Arusha for a bit.

Sunday we had hopes of going swimming but the weather really just wasn't cooperating, so we were all pretty lazy that day. I don't remember doing a whole lot of anything. Just dealt with some of the good old drama that can come with living in a house that is similar to the show Big Brother's House. We had a girl who was supposed to be here for 6 weeks come and was gone after 5 days, sad thing really because she's missing out big time!

My update on Riziki the sick little baby, is mostly good news. She is now out of the hospital and back at cradle, shes also gained a little little bit of weight. We won't find out for a month if she for sure is HIV+ or not, but the rapid test does show that she has the HIV antibodies, though this sometimes happens with infants and it doesn't mean that she is for sure +. The hole in her heart will possibly be operable but not until she is a much older girl, around 12 years old they think. Right now the chances of her making it to that age are very slim though. She is a tough little girl and I have much hope that she will make it through. For now we are just extra careful with her and feeding her every 2 hours even through the night. She still does turn blue sometimes though. Also the doctors said that sometimes these kinds of holes will fix themselves, so fingers crossed that she will be one of those lucky patients.

As for other news at Cradle: 2 of our other babies got sent to another orphanage today. They are both quite sad stories, and very frustrating!

Pendo was abandoned I believe as a baby, and she was the one baby at Cradle who for sure is HIV+ and the poor little thing, is always so sick, and will most likely never get adopted. The procedures for adopting an abandoned baby is much more difficult than adopting a baby who has parents or a parent that can sign the rights over. This means that most people won't even get attached to an abandoned baby to adopt because its so hard emotionally when they find out that they can't have the baby over some technicallity.

James also was sent to another orphanage today, the same one Pendo was taken too. James's mamma had him quite young probably 15 or 16, and he was most likely the result of rape or prostitution. I believe family members took him in for the first few years because mom couldn't do it. Then at 18 she got pregnant again, and had Clara. I think it was at this point that she decided she just couldn't handle it, and for whatever her reasons may have been. She decided she was going to sell both James and Clara. Here in Africa most people believe in spirits and are very traditional in their ways, some much more than others. So, in some places they leave babies and children out to die, or they will throw them off a rock or kill them somehow and these childrens bodies being sacrificed is meant to keep the gods happy. I am not totally educated on that, but that is the general idea of what I understood so correct me if I am wrong. Either way James and Clara were lucky enough to have community members stop that from happening and bring them to cradle. Though they were essentially abandoned at Cradle, and didnt have any parents to sign them over. So there are 2 seperate families who both want to adopt James and Clara together, and I think they had started the tedious adoption process, when last week an eldery lady came and said that she was their bibi (grandma). She wanted to take James back with her but for whatever reason changed her mind. After this she signed something saying that they can't be adopted, even though shes not planning on taking them. This is the part that I don't understand and have alot of frustration over, because there were these 2 bright children who had families that wanted to take them together, and now they will forever be stuck in an orphanage and shipped from place to place, and the siblings will most likely be permanently seperated. So unfortunately because Cradle can only take them until the age of 3. James had reached that age, and he had to go to the other orphanage. It's truly frustrating, and extremely upsetting. There will always be things in the world that you don't agree with though, and that just don't seem right.



It is absolutely crazy to me that I have been here in Africa for a month, it really doesn't feel like it, but at the same time it does feel like home, and I am happy calling it that!

Yesterday (Tuesday) I went to another school I think called Jithadia with some of the other people in the house, because they had planned a field trip for their students (ages5-9 I would say) so they needed extra hands and it sounded like a lot of fun. They had set up a mini safari walk for the kids, so we all took dala dalas out to Arusha National Park, an hour and a bit away. For most of these kids that is the farthest they had ever been from home, and the longest dala dala ride...this proved itself when one of the little ones got car sick and threw up. Poor thing :( Regardless all of the kids were sooo excited, and it was great to see.
However we ran into some trouble when we got to the park gates, because previously the girls had went to check rates and the sign said that the entrance fee for East Africans was 1500Tsh (1CND $) and non East Africans it was 35US$. In order to work here we all have residents, and our passports say that we are actual residents of TZ so we assumed we would be charged the resident price. They didn't agree though, they said we had to be a citizen, and we were just residents. Soooo it really sucked because none of us actually got to go in then, because we didn't bring enough money with us. It was really upsetting, I felt terrible for the girls who had organized it and were so looking forward to spending the day with their kids. So the kids went in, and hopefully had a great day and we just went back to town walked around and tried some local food, so we still made a good out of a bad situation.

I was planning a trip to Uganda for the end of the month, after my program is done here and before my program starts in Kenya. We are suppposed to go rafting down the nile, and I was really really looking forward to it. However there is now some political stuff going on there, and we may not be able to go. So I was really bummed, but i'm just going to see how everything is before I leave and decide then. If I can't do Uganda I will just go to Mombasa or around there somewhere on the Kenyan coast. So still definitely not a bad time!

I am starting to get very sad, because a lot of my friends who I came with in the same orientation and many of the others I have become very close with are leaving me this weekend or have just left or are leaving really soon! It makes me really sad actually, because everyone I have met here is amazing!

Well i'm off for now to maybe nap before our Wine, Cheese, and Crepe dinner at a restaurant that is supposed to be great, and then to Empire the Karaoke Bar!

Missing you guys back at home, i've been wondering what you all are up to, and what I would have been up to this summer if I hadn't come here. Though I wouldn't change my mind for a second, this may be the best decision i've ever made.....its up there anyways, and I already have memories that will last a life time!