snooow!

So, my trip to Lesotho was great, and there were a few surprises along the way including a snowfall that kept us stuck in Jayne's village for a couple of days. It was really cool to get to visit Jayne and see what she does. She moved into a village called Molumong in the mountains of Lesotho to improve her Sesotho skills, but she really saw the need there and felt like that was were God was calling her to stay for now. So she's helping form a support group and linking them with the local clinic and hospitals. People are hearing about her and come knocking on her door to be tested for HIV. She's also leading workshops and reaching out to previously unreached people, like the herd boys who spend days and days alone herding sheep and cattle. Once she has the support group to a point where she feels like they are self sufficient, she's planning to move to another village and start over. She talks to the people in the village about Jesus every day. She's living in this little house with no electricity, no running water and I think she's one of the most content people I've ever met.

For me, using the village outhouse would take some getting used to...especially in the snow! I had a really good time visiting her though, even when we rode horses into another village to check on a patient. I hadn't ridden a horse in about 10 years and even though it was better than I remembered I suffered for it for a couple of days every time I tried to sit down. One of the local women who didn't speak any English taught me how to make Basotho steamed bread with a lot of hand motions and just talking to me in Sesotho anyway (since I've been in Africa I've learned that a lot of things Americans get stereotyped for are not only American things, such as telling someone who doesn't understand your language the same thing over and over again, just louder). On Sunday there was no church because of the snow and a leak in the church roof, so like good missionaries we skipped church and played cards all afternoon. Jayne and I played with 3 of the guys in the village, only one of whom spoke English, but I'm pleased to report that trash talking and bragging transcends cultural boundaries. I would also like to report that I am the reigning Molumong Crazy Eights champion, much to the dismay of several Basotho men.

I posted more pictures of my trip to Lesotho and the kids at Lily.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2058704&l=40373&id=34104123

Here's one of my favorites videos I just took a few days ago. Enjoy! Bonus points if you can tell which verse is in English ;)

well...

My plan last week was to post a little video that I made with one of the kids saying hello and giving a short update on everything. However, I waited for an hour at the internet cafe for the video to upload and realized it just wasn't going to happen. So I haven't been totally neglecting this blog.

The past week has been pretty hectic. Monday was Lily clinic, or was supposed to be, but the doctor didn't show up. Again. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we were all at the hospital. Wednesday, because the doctor didn't come Monday, we had so many kids and house parents who had to go that we had to take the big bus that we use to take the kids to school. Needless to say that was a long and hectic day for me. Thursday we went to Northdale, my most hated hospital here. We have a little boy here with what seems like recurrent UTIs, but urine culture have shown no bacteria in his urine but they have shown blood. Since Northdale is our regional hospital, that's where we have to take him to try to get further tests done or xrays of his kidneys. However, his doctor has decided that he got an infection from swimming in a river. I said, there are no rivers where we are. It would take him at least an hour walk to get to one. The doctor's response? "You don't know anything about little boys." And then he prescribed him an antibiotic and tylenol. The local doctor has even written a letter to the hospital stating that he felt the child needed xrays and an ultrasound but they've pretty much ignored that. I'm going again on Monday with him and we'll see if we can make any more progress. I think I surpised the doctor last time because he's not used to having anyone question him or argue with him, and I have no problem doing either. Ha.

Tuesday I'm leaving for Lesotho with Pieter and Larensia, a South African couple that I met through my former roommate Ana. We're going on a very short "mission" trip to stay with Jayne, an American nurse through AIM that's the head of their HIV initiative in Lesotho. I'm pretty excited about it even though I realized I have no clue what I'm going to be doing while I'm there. I'm really looking forward to seeing another side of HIV ministry.

A church from California that sponsors Lily recently donated money for them to put in in-ground trampolines. This has provided endless hours of entertainment for the kids, not only when they jump on it but when we do too. One of the girls told me I was too old to jump on the trampoline and I was going to break my bones. And this was even before I turned 25.

My favorite things I've heard this week:
"Miss Sarah, how old did you turn on your birthday?"
"25"
(GASP) "You're joking!"
said to me by a 4 year old girl

"Oh! You're so beautiful!"
said to me by a 7 year old boy one rare day when I wore a skirt

"Miss Sarah, I love you!"
that's my favorite

grace my feet, faith my eyes....

One big difference I've noticed between hospitals at home and hospitals here when I went to visit one of our kids in the hospital is how they treat the parents. There's a room on some of the wards for the moms to sleep at night (the kids are in rooms with 6-8 beds in them). I had to laugh when I noticed this schedule on the door of the moms' sleeping room:

4:30 am- Wake up and make sure you are groomed neatly
5:00- Attend morning devotions with staff
5:30- Clean your sleeping area and make sure the bathroom is clean
6:30-Feed your baby
7:30-Bathe your baby and assist nursing staff with caring for your baby
9:00- Bond with your baby
10:00- Tea
10:30- Doctor's rounds. This is the time you are allowed to ask about the condition of your baby and if there are any changes if the doctor is not too busy.
12:00- Feed your baby

And so on and so forth, including a 9 pm bedtime. Maybe my friends at Vanderbilt should try it and see how it goes over?


In other news, we found a spitting cobra at Lily this week living under the steps of House 10. Not cool. What's even less cool is that he was small, which means he has a cobra family somehwere.

I've added another one of the kids to our chest physio program and he actually loves it. He's been entertaining me every day, especially with his attempts to blow up a balloon. When I was doing chest percussion he said he was going to take a nap because it was very relaxing. He's a trip. This now makes 6 kids who need chest physio three times a week at minimum, and some have been requested to have it every day. I feel like a respiratory therapist all of a sudden!

holiday!

I got to go on holiday for two weeks and it was wonderful and exactly what I needed. We started off in St. Lucia, a little beach town where they have lots and lots of hippos. There was a big beach that divided the ocean and an estuary and you could walk down there and see a huge family of hippos sleeping along with a few crocodiles. Around 5 pm or so they would all wake up and start swimming around so they were very entertaining to watch. I couldn't believe how incredibly big they were and how cool it was to see them that close out in the wild. While we were there we went to a game reserve called Hluhluwe, and we saw a huge herd of about 28 elephants (including some really small babies), along with rhinos, giraffes, baboons, zebras, impala, wildebeest, kudu, water buffalo, warthogs and lots of birds (which were not that interesting).

After that we went to Swaziland, which was pretty . We had rented a car and it was so nice to have a cd player and air conditioning! We were able to go hiking by a river and waterfall, and we saw monkeys there too. After Swaziland, we flew to Cape Town which was incredible. Not only did Cape Town have fountain drinks (!) and Haagen Daas (thank you God for midnight cookies and cream) but the scenery was amazing. Hiking up Table Mountain one day gave us views of the whole city and also reminded me how out of shape I was. Cape Point was beautiful too and we stopped on the way down at Simon's Town where the colonies of African penguins live. The beach was so beautiful and the penguins were so cute! They're used to tourists so they didn't pay any attention to us at all and just waddled and swam around. The next day I was able to see some friends who work with a ministry in Cape Town who had visited Lily, and we went out to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was in prison for over 25 years. I stayed with Naomi, my AIM missions coordinator and on Friday she took us to Hermanus, one of the only places in the world where you can see whales from land. We sat out for about three hours just watching the whales swim and splash around (and possibly, ahem, make little whales).

It was so restful to go on vacation for a while. It was almost exactly my halfway point here and I couldn't believe how nice it was to relax and know that I could sleep through the night or get in the shower (which was also a treat) and no one would come knocking on the door. Sometimes it's hard in the middle of something to see how much it wears you out but I was definitely getting worn out. I missed the kids so much while I was gone though! It was a very small taste of what it's going to be like in December. It was so good to see them all when I came back. They were so excited to see me (especially the ones who thought I left forever without saying goodbye) and the house moms were all sweet and gave me big hugs and told me they missed me. It was like coming back home after vacation and I can't really imagine what it will be like to leave for good.
This week has been good and busy again as usual, so not much has changed! I've had some kind of stomach virus the second half of the week which helped me kick that annoying eating habit I had for about 3 days. I'm feeling a lot better today though and my appetite has come back with a vengeance. Otherwise things are going well and I posted some pictures from the trip:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2056215&l=06693&id=34104123

Miss Sarah, how old are you?

24? But you're so short!


I have not been the most diligent updater lately. Things at Lily have been so, so busy and every time I've sat down at an internet cafe I couldn't narrow down what I wanted to talk about enough to write out a blog. Natalie and Ana have both left now and I'm definitely missing my friends! It's such a strange feeling to have almost everyone leave who was here when I got here. Right now there's 3 female volunteers and one male volunteer, and two more girls will be coming in the next week. Which leads me to an interesting question: Why are there so many more single women than men doing mission work? John (the new volunteer) and I had this discussion a couple of days ago after I commented that the guys' house has been empty or only had one person in it for about 4 months (and when Rapha first came last summer he lived in that house alone for 6 months) and the girls have been sharing rooms because there were more volunteers than rooms in the two female houses. I was also looking at my last newsletter that AIM sent me, and out of the list of long-termers they sent out in July, 4 were single women and there was one married couple. Of the short termers, about 11 were single women and 5 were single men. Josh Casper and I had this discussion after he came back from India, and I would like to hear opinions on it, because I really don't know why it is that way.
Right now things are going pretty well at Lily although I'll admit I had a couple weeks where things were pretty tough. I was so busy doing things that I'm not really trained or prepared to do (such as, trying to figure out of the 70 kids on ARVs, which ones need to see the doctor or have their blood drawn or get their blood results which months) and I was completely exhausted. I had some weeks where I was so busy doing things or going to the hospital all day every day that I hardly was able to see the kids at all. I've really had to think about what I'm doing here and what God is using me for. I've been praying about it a lot and I think that God is giving me grace for each day. The perfect timing of letters, phone calls, and emails from family and friends at home was always exactly what I needed.
I also just got to watch a video from home and it was so great to see everyone's faces! It made me miss everyone at Vanderbilt so much. So I just wanted to say hi and I love you to Tracy, Karina, Marcia, Ben, Rhonda, Miss Ellen, Rod, Karna, Beth, and Teren and everyone else from work! I miss y'all! Also, I got to see the beautiful faces of Esther, Laura, Casper and was serenaded (for a really long time) by Aboye. It was pretty much perfect.

In the past couple weeks, some of my best/funniest moments with the kids have included:
- Asking Musa, "What have you been doing today?" and him answering in a panicked voice, "To who??"
- Having my sassy little girl run back to give me a hug after chest physio.
- Having one of the toddlers who hates me because I held her while the doctor examined her NOT scream when I came in the room.
- Two of the preteen boys asking me what 'menstruation' was and when I gave them a (very basic) answer they said that wasn't what the Grade 7 boys told them and they were going to have to think it over.
- Aphiwe showing Natalie his drawing and telling her to look at his "very very very good job".


I'm about to go on holiday so the next time I blog I should be able to talk about Cape Town and St. Lucia, along with my attempts to learn to drive a manual car. Ick.

my lyrics are bottomless...

A short update, since I'm very tired and have limited internet time at the cafe! This was another busy week, surprise surprise. We had another late night trip to the hospital with a child who had a severe allergic reaction to something that we haven't been able to figure out and threw up the benadryl I gave her (right on my pajama pants, btw). It was actually a blessing because there had been a worker's strike that day, ie. there were no taxi drivers, ie. no one had transport to the hospital and almost no one was in the emergency room. Also we were supposed to be at a goodbye dinner an hour away and ended up not going because of the strike. The doctor examined her for approximately 15 seconds before diagnosing her with an allergic reaction and prescribing AN ANTIBIOTIC AND TYLENOL. Please see earlier posts to understand the irony of this. I finally just asked him for a benadryl injection, we got it, and went home.
I posted some more pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053341&l=48d77&id=34104123

A little video action (hopefully)

A couple of weeks ago Natalie got this video of me playing with one of the little girls that lives in the house next door to me. She used to be extremely withdrawn and closed off and it's been amazing to watch her open up. Anyway, I loved seeing her laugh like this. I have no idea if the video will work.