Great Moments in Parenting: Bad Morning

Seth and I are about to become parents to our own child, but for the last year we have been full time (24 hours a day) caretakers to 60 kids.  Luckily for our kid, it has taught us a thing or two.  We've even had parenting fights - a surreal experience I have to say.

Over the year there have been some great moments, here is one.

Bad Morning
Kasara is with me and numerous other children in the Parent on Duty office.  We are having a full blown battle over her taking her medicine. You see, Kasara is an independent girl and I've learned over time to not get into these battles of wills with her. I've learned that if I want Kasara to do something I better be careful in how I go about it.  Here are a few of my rules:

• Never directly tell Kasara she has to do something
• Always give detailed explanations
• Give her options
• Talk to her alone if possible
• Make sure the consequence it a fair one and you follow through
• If you pick a battle make sure you win
• Be quick to ask for forgiveness and to forgive

But this was a bad morning.

After cleaning Kasara's infected foot for the millionth time, it was only looking worse.  She'd been hobbling around on it for well over a week, complaining the whole time.  So I decided it was time she took a round of antibiotics (you didn't know I could prescribe antibiotics to 10 year olds? Pffft, shows what you know. I'll tell you more about my medical misadventures another time). 

I say to Kasara with no explanation, "You have to take this medicine for 5 days, 2x's a day, you can't miss and you have to finish it. Here take this now."

And...FAIL.

Kasara goes into complete and total stubborn battle mode - she is not budging.

Ah, poop.  What are my rules again? Oh yeah. Ok, give her lots of explanation so she can decide to make a smart decision.

"Kasara, you have to take this medicine.  Do you want to end up like Concy?"

Context: Concy is one of Kasara's bffs, she doesn't live at the home but is around a lot.  She only has one leg, she lost the other leg from an infection or cancer or cancer that was treated and became infected - the story is a little muddled a lot like the medical care she received.

Yes, that is really what I said.  Brilliant, huh?

The sound of shocked gasps turns out to sound the same in Nimule as everywhere else and this is what I hear as the office goes deadly quite.  

Concy is standing behind me.  I am a complete jerk.

So now I've got another hole to dig myself out of.

I turn to Concy and apologize for my insensitive remark, but then ask her to justify what I just said ("I mean, that is how you lost your leg, right?").  Once a jerk...

Luckily, children are gracious.

Concy forgives me.  Kasara, for her friend's sake, takes the medicine and immediately changes the mood of the entire room to a light-hearted fun environment.  I'm telling you she has this kind of power.

A few minutes later we've all moved on and are enjoying each other. I'm continuing with medical issues and Kasara is my happy side kick.  Mostly I think she is trying to make sure I don't screw up again.

The two of us are standing in front of our very large very tipsy medicine cabinet.  Kasara then decides to lean her weight on the cabinet door. The whole thing starts to come down on us.  This is what I do:

Yell "KASARA!" Grab the cabinet and hit Kasara.  Yep.  HIT her.

Again, silence.

Kasara and I look at each other shocked and dumbfounded and then break into hysterical laughter.  Then I know that to be given this much grace, I must not always be the worst parent ever.

Concy & Kasara

An ellipse to end a chapter

It's a simple story really, but confusing nonetheless:
Two months ago, everything was moving forward as planned; our project at Cornerstone Children's Home was wrapping up, and we were cultivating new relationships and dreaming about new projects with our friends in Nimule. We had moved into our new house and were busily making it into a home - buying furniture, putting in a solar electrical system, figuring out such issues as water collection and waste disposal. We had said we planned to be in South Sudan for two years, but the way things were going, it seemed like that horizon could extend even further out.
The one surprise, a happy one, was Sarah's pregnancy, and we were going back and forth about whether to go to Uganda for the delivery or spend some time back in the US. In the meantime, we were making the three hour bus trip every month to see our obstetrician in Gulu, Uganda. Sure, Sarah had been sick and her energy level was low, even as we headed into our second trimester, but we chalked those up to the normal maladies of early pregnancy.
We were only slightly alarmed, then, when Sarah started having some severe cramping late in July. Our calendar indicated a doctor's appointment only a week away, but we decided to play it safe and make an early trip just in case. The news started bad and got worse: Sarah had lost weight between weeks 12 and 16, her hemoglobin and iron were low, and - the coup de grace - she had typhoid and had carried it for the entire pregnancy. For the next week we were back and forth to the hospital each morning and evening for Sarah to get injections that would start combating the illness. Miracle of miracles, even after finishing the treatment, our baby was still healthy.
During that week we made the decision that we couldn't live with taking unnecessary risks on behalf of our unborn child, and staying in South Sudan had suddenly become one of those unnecessary risks. We decided to return to Denver in early September and stay indefinitely.
We're stepping into a great void of unknowns. With ever improving mobile phone and Internet service, we plan to stay in touch with our colleagues on South Sudan, supporting them, and developing projects together. We don't know exactly what that will look like, but we are confident that it will be beneficial. We have met with unwavering support from our friends here in Nimule as we have faced this challenge, and we are looking forward to introducing them to our child one day.
At the end of the day, we are sad to be leaving so many wonderful people but honored to have such profound friendships. We are proud of the work that we did at Cornerstone Children's Home. Mostly, we continue to feel blessed by the prospect of parenthood and the hope we adhere to for our child. Uncertain of what the future holds exactly, we nonetheless look forward to what it may bring.

The Library, Part 2

(You can find part 1 of this story here)

One day while you're still recovering your strength and learning to trust your stomach again, you find yourself sitting with a small group of small boys and reading to them again from the same book that you've read from a hundred times. Somehow, they still love it - they love pointing to the picture and telling you what is happening on the page, then telling you what will happen on the next page, and the older ones even love showing off and reading a few words here and there. You start to say something to them, as you've said to them each of the last dozen times you've read from this book, but this time instead of "one day we'll have a whole library of books" or "one day we'll open up those 18 boxes of books in our library," what comes out is "do you guys want to read some new books?"

Something in their eyes - the incredulity tempered by a spark of curiosity - sets something off. By the time you're opening the door of the library, a group of 3 boys has become a group of 6 which soon becomes a group of 8 and then 10. They seem to understand intrinsically that the 35 pound boxes they are handling are worth more than their weight in gold: the first box that each boy opens reveals its contents, and - without fail - their jaws drop and eyes widen.

One box contains nothing but chapter books - The Westing Game, Indian In The Cupboard, Island of the Blue Dolphins - the books that you may have read in your boyhood, and they transport you back. Without meaning to, you're holding up books and whispering in reverent tones simple sentiments like, "oh, wow, you're going to love this." Book after book after book comes out of the box, and each one carries in its title a unique and precious memory. The boys are stunned that you've read so many books, want to know what each one is about, want to stop unloading and start hearing the stories each book contains, want to find the books they can read themselves. Soon, they bring every book to you and ask, "this one? Have you read this one?" Harry Potter and Hatchet, Little House on the Prairie, A Wrinkle in Time. One time not long ago, you might have thought these books weren't culturally appropriate for these kids, but seeing the way that they are delighted every time they come upon a book from your past, you can't help but spend 30 seconds or so spellbinding them with the wonders within. It's less than an hour before both you and they can't tolerate simply looking at the covers of books anymore, and you gather in a cluster and break open one of the Narnia books that they've picked out. They listen attentively, and at the end of the first chapter, they get up to go - the last two boys out pausing in the doorway to ask, "we can come back tomorrow?"

The library becomes a source of endless fascination and word about it spreads among all the children. Before the week is out, you can't walk from your house to the latrine without a child running up to you to ask if it's time to go in the library. Once that door opens, the children - girls as well as boys now - set to work unpacking boxes, stamping books, putting books into baskets and then onto shelves, and - of course - finding a few minutes here and there to read and look and wonder.

One Tuesday night is declared Story Night - in the afternoon the children working in the library select a handful of books that three members of staff will read to them, huddled in small groups throughout the church sanctuary. They pick out Frog and Toad Are Friends, A Disney Princess Adventure, and Goodnight Moon. At 8:00pm, the small petrol generator is fired up, and by 8:05pm 50 children are sitting in the church buzzing about which story they want to hear. Even the normally disinterested teenagers have made sure not to miss this night; in fact, as you read a chapter of Frog and Toad and encourage the older children to help you out by reading a paragraph or even a page, it seems like they might be enjoying the book even more than the kids who are just listening. Soon every child who is able wants a chance to read, and when they reach the end of a paragraph or a page they don't want to stop. At 8:30pm, the petrol runs out and the generator dies. Sitting in a suddenly darkened church, no one moves. By 8:31pm, flashlights come on and the reading continues until the books are finished.

And you can't know this for sure, but you like to imagine that the children fall asleep that night with images of princesses, frogs, toads, and moons running through their minds.

A library comes to life slowly, becoming a thing that lives in minds and imaginations before it becomes an organized collection housed on shelves. There are still boxes to unpack, and books to stamp, and bookcases to build and fill with stacks and stacks of books - but you have a library now.

On Growing Up

February 24, 2011
Last summer, as we were preparing to move here, we received an email with the names and ages of all of the children who currently live at Cornerstone Children's Home, and we were stupefied: half of the children were over 15, some of them over 18, and a few of those over the age of 20. "Why are they still living in a children's home?" we thought to ourselves. 
You may think this thought makes us terrible people. While you may be able to find damning evidence of our terribleness, let me argue to you that this thought should be inadmissible: 20-year-olds are not children - especially here, it's not uncommon for one so old to be married and even have children. A 20-year-old who lives with children, in a home whose rules are geared toward children - and is therefore treated as a child - will act, inevitably, like a child. 
The number of ways in which a 20-year-old is not a child are myriad - the impulses and desires felt, the capabilities acquired - and at some point those differences are so manifest that they simply cannot be ignored. A 20-year-old who is treated as a child will one day have an abrupt awakening to the fact that childhood is, in fact, gone. And what then? Will the 20-year-old no longer child be able to support shimself or have any sense of how to spend money wisely? Forgot about day-to-day living, what about making big life decisions wisely?
When we arrived, we found that the situation was as we had feared: the older children bristled against the rules and had grown accustomed to having everything done for them. And they expected that the status quo would hold forever; with no exit plan the children were becoming a bit hopeless themselves. The staff feared the children were becoming lazy and spoiled. 
But what can you do with 33 teenagers/twentysomethings and 4 staff (not to mention the remaining 27 children)? To start with, you hire more staff. 
For about 4 months now, we have been working on a program to give our young adults the skills to reintegrate into their families and communities and be able to provide for themselves. The center piece of the plan is an after school work program that will build vocational skills, starting with agriculture. 
We have spent hours dispelling the myths that we are chasing them away and reinforcing the idea that we want the best for them. We have assigned each of them a staff mentor to guide them through the process, and we have given them a month to prepare and get used to the idea (in hindsight, that also meant that we gave them a month to disseminate misinformation among themselves. Oops). 
That's how we ended up with 30 boys & girls one day swinging hoes, digging up rocks, carting manure, and laying bricks to build a chicken coop. At first, many of them were resistant - like most people they fear change, and they fear the unknown. I'd love to say that they all came around and realized that this was going to be totally awesome. That wouldn't exactly be true, however. But here's what is true: they worked, and they worked together in teams, and they worked hard, and when the time came to call it a day a handful of them weren't quite ready. It was only the first day; starting something is often much easier than maintaining it, but it felt good to at least start it. 

Context Matters

2/17/2011 Being out of context
It has now been six months since we arrived. One of the best
indicators that the "living in rural Africa" novelty has worn off is
when the opposite of what was novel becomes novel. For example:
staying in a hotel and delighting that you don't have to walk 100
meters to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. And, well, the
novelty has worn off. I saw my friend Ken, the Maybe But Probably Not
Murderer yesterday and it barely registered. The constant presence of
lizards, spiders, et al for even the most private acts (like
defeating) is assumed. Even the 105 degree heat doesn't faze me any
more than the average Joe. There are rhythms and patterns of
familiarity that typically govern the day.
My role in the lives of the children is as the provider of things -
school supplies, medicine, food, soap, games, bandages, the occasional
smile/hug/word of encouragement (wouldn't want to be too generous with
those, though). And someone always needs provision, and someone always
has a complaint about what has been provided. And it's exhausting
sometimes, which is why I wasn't particularly excited about the
prospect of taking a group of kids to the market to buy sandals
yesterday.
A brief but relevant digression: I have come to recognize that every
relationship can benefit from a change of context (digressions from my
digression: this may be why romantic relationships need dates. Triple
digression: please, people, don't call it "a date night." It is a
date. You might designate a specific night for a consistent date, and
that might be "date night," but please don't use an article with the
term).
As a teacher, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received was to
go to as many extracurricular events as possible. When I didn't have
to be the warm yet strict, extremely focused taskmaster and could just
be present and enjoy myself and take pride in my students, my role as
an educator was strengthened not undermined, because I wasn't only an
educator, and I wasn't an adversary (which I often was in the
classroom) - I was a supporter with no other agenda.
As the provider of all things, my relationship with the children is
pretty strictly limited to our home. It's about four acres, so it
encompasses a whole host of different interactions, and I tend to
escape from the compound for exactly three reasons: going out of town,
going out on a date with Sarah (to one of three restaurants), or going
out of my mind (this tends to involve a long walk in which I mutter to
myself and try to avoid the various crazy people who have recognized
me as one of their own).
Funny things happen on the way to the market: instead of sixty
children, I find myself with only three, and suddenly we're having a
prolonged conversation (about why I don't cook for Sarah and whether
she will one day beat me because of it. They, of course, would never
want a man to cook for them). There are no chores for me to remind
them to do, and no supplies for them to request of me, so instead we
talk and laugh. It must be appealing, because soon three other
children join us.
In the market, I make the children at first pretend like they don't
know me, so as to avoid paying the white person price for their new
sandals. I pretend to shop for myself while keeping a distance of
about 50 feet from the kids, and when they've found the sandals they
want and settled on a price they come to me for the money. This works
for about 15 minutes, but the market isn't huge and it's hard to
disguise six children coming to the white man to get money from him
and then returning with the balance (which makes me feel a little like
the Artful Dodger).
Girls of a certain age want to see every pair of sandals being sold by
every vendor before they make a decision, so shopping takes a long
time. I am greeted by approximately one thousand people (the novelty
has worn off for me, apparently not for them) while I wait for them to
find just the right pair and haggle it down to just the right price
(they know that if they can stay under the budget I have laid out for
them, I'll let them buy sweets with the balance. This makes them much
more discerning shoppers).
We push ever further back in the market, but by the time we find our
way out all of them have new sandals that they picked out themselves
and - if the smiles on their faces are any indication - that they
love. What they don't have is a remaining balance, but I find myself
feeling unexpectedly generous and unhurried by the slowly setting sun,
so we stop at the various storefronts along the way looking for
something called Super Dip, which the children love and which I
suspect might be one of those Chinese candies laced with cancer that
the FDA forbade in the US. But, again, the children love it, and I'm
feeling particularly indulgent toward the children, so sugary cancer
it is! And again, we find ourselves in a prolonged conversation (this
time about eating pig - which they all claim they have done and
liked...until I say we should buy one and eat it, then their story
quickly changes).
We arrive back at the compound in the twilight of the day, and the
children rush off to show their new sandals to their brothers and
sisters. Twelve-year-old Kasara looks at me and says, "Seth, I also
need sandals." Two others immediately echo her refrain, and a third
complains to me that Sarah told her she couldn't get new sandals yet.
Then she starts crying, and a too brief step out of context comes to
an end.

The Worst English Lesson Ever

Warning: this post contains a censored expletive (repeated several times) and should probably be rated PG-13.  You’ll even know which word I’m censoring. So maybe I should just leave it in, but I won’t.

Come back in time with me to about one month ago.  The scene: a warm Nimule night, just after darkness has fallen.  There’s still a little juice in our solar batteries, so some lights are on, and the children are enjoying running around and playing in the dark.  I’ve just finished eating and am standing awkwardly outside, just kind of standing there. 

*Enter Kasara, the boldest and most generally awesome 12-year-old on the face of the planet, along with the 6 or 7 other kids who follow Kasara everywhere she goes.*

*Kasara and her coterie play kind of unenthusiastically for about 2 minutes, and then…*

Kasara: Se-eth?

Me: Yes, Kasara.

Kasara: What is the meaning of @#%^ing?

Me: (unsure if I’ve heard correctly) Wait, what?

*The children in the background have been listening nonchalantly, for they too want to be enriched with this knowledge of the great English language.  They now join in with Kasara.*

Child 1/Joyce: @#%^ing. What is @#%^ing?

Child 2/Jaclyn: Yes, what is the meaning of @#%^ing?

Me: Well, it kind of depends on the context…

*No, I didn’t actually say that – but it was the first thing I thought.  What really happened was…*

Me: Um, well…in English that’s a really bad thing to say.  You really shouldn’t say it, like ever.

*All the children lower their heads in shame.*

Kasara: Oh. Sorry.

Me: No, you’re not in trouble – you didn’t know what it means and were just asking a question.  But it’s a really bad word.

Child 3/Kamau: What is, @#%^ing?

Me: Yes. Yes, that. Now that you know it’s a bad word, you shouldn’t say it anymore.  If I hear you say it again then you will be in trouble. By the way, where did you hear…that word?

*What I’m really getting at here is, “you didn’t hear me say it, right?” but I can’t be that direct.*

Kasara: *mumbles something about hearing someone say it somewhere in the market*

Me: OK. (sigh of relief) Well, just don’t say it anymore.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like the one about one child “injecting the anus” of another.  Unfortunately, because it requires an explanatory hand gesture, it has to be told in person.

Bedtime Stories

Lately we've taken to the time-honored tradition of reading bedtime stories to our younger children every night. We have this great edition of Peter Pan that has illustrations on every page, and it's already a familiar story because they've seen the movie, so the kids absolutely love it and have taken to the time-honored tradition of pleading for just one more chapter every night.

Sunday night, after promising to come read to them, I went into the office where we keep the book and was unable to find it. Unable to face the kids with no story, I made a snap decision that we would make up our own stories together. I asked one child to pick an animal, another to give the animal a name, and a third to come up with a description of the animal. At various junctures in the story, I would pause and ask them, "what do you think happened next?" and whatever they said became what happened next.

Without further ado, I present to you the story of "Tima, the Zebra who Urinated Inside":

Once upon a time, there was a zebra named Tima, but Tima wasn't like other zebras: Tima had a magic tongue, and when her tongue touched water it would turn the water into milk. Tima was so lucky because she always got to drink lots of milk.

One day, Tima drank a big barrel full of milk, and drinking all the milk made her so tired at she went into her house and fell asleep. While Tima was asleep, the clever hare came and put a lock on her door so that she couldn't get out. When Tima woke, she found she was locked in...and what was worse, she had to urinate.

Tima called out, "help me please. I'm locked in my house, and I have to urinate!" But no one came, so she waited, but still she had to urinate so badly that she called for help again and again no one came. Now Tima was beginning to have a pain in her stomach from needing to urinate, and she knew that if she didn't urinate soon she might explode. She decided she would have to urinate inside.

So she did, but then she found she had a new problem: once she started urinating she couldn't stop. Soon the urine was up to her ankle, and she was still urinating! She called for help again, "will someone please come open the door?" but still no one came, and now the urine was reaching to her knee. She kept calling for help, and no one kept coming, and the urine kept rising higher and higher - to her waist, then to her shoulders, and soon she was swimming to keep her head above the urine.

And then Tima remembered her magic tongue. If she could turn water into milk, maybe she could do the same thing with urine. She thought, 'should I touch my tongue to the urine?' and because she was about to drown, she decided she had to. So she stuck out her tongue and touched it to the urine, but of course the urine didn't turn into milk, because only water turns into milk. But you know what the urine did turn into? Soda!

Tima remembered that she had a bunch of bottles in her house, so she dove into the soda, found the bottles, and began to fill them up. Then she took the bottles of soda and sold them.

And to this day, every time Tima urinates, she does it into a bottle and touches her tongue to the urine to turn it to soda. And now Tima is a very rich zebra.

The End

Fun with fire and other good toys

Evenings are my favorite time of the day around here. The sun instead of scorching, in it’s usual style, paints the sky in the most beautiful colors in all directions here. It is a rare time when the kids are occupied and content, knowing it is too late to ask for new games or anything that must be purchased and too early for medicine or study materials. There is always a group playing football at the center of the compound just outside the office door, and a group playing games around the steps and a group gathered around the kitchen waiting for dinner. I love sitting on the steps at this time watching the sky, playing games or seeing who will win the soccer match today.

I stepped outside yesterday to take it all in when my attention was drawn to a reflection of the orange sun in a patch of grass across the compound. This reflection came in the form of our 11 year old queen bee, Kasara, and her bff, Lilly, sparing with large branches of fire while the grass lit up below them. As they were jousting their weapons of flame, about 4 of our youngest daughters were dancing and jumping in the sparks and smoke.

Awesome.

Just as I am about to run as fast as I can to strangle Kasara, I realize I have left a three year old in front of my computer as well as two other kids in detention with all our valuables in the office. After shooing everyone out and closing the office door I rush outside and am stopped by a truck full of men and our friend Pasquali . I politely say excuse me “I just need to stop something”. The truck full of men got a good laugh at the frantic white woman running across the compound, but I was too busy trying to remember if I learned anything about burn wounds in the first aid book I was reading earlier that day and imagining 6 year old Nonyo’s blue dress going up in flames.

This is how it went down:
Me: “Kasara! Stop what you are doing right now!”
Kasara : “We are putting out fire”
Me: “Really, cause this is how you put a fire out” as I quickly smother and stomp the branches and grass
Kasara : “We were just playing with fire” she says indignant and confused

That’s right, just playing with fire.

I will add this to the list of things our children think are perfectly good toys. This list includes aerosol cans of bug poison (most fun to try to smash open with rocks!), razor blades, sheets of plastic tied tightly around their necks and over their heads, rusty nails and rusty machetes (really anything that could cut you and give you tetanus is a wonderful toy). I have seriously taken all of these things away from our children.

Miraculously we haven’t had any children die or even that seriously injured and in my book that is a win. I have seen some toe nails ripped off, but who needs toenails anyway?

Things I urgently feel you should know:

·         One of the cooks here has a young daughter. Her name is Kevin. I don't know why that is; it just is. Sometimes you have to accept that.

·         Two weeks ago we were in a 2.5 hour meeting with the engineer in charge of our new building to renegotiate a labor expense (long story short, the original bill of quantities is for his crew to do all the interior prepping and painting of the ceilings and walls, they are now only prepping, thus a new, lower price needed to be reached). This meeting began at 8:45. At night. But we negotiated a new price. We even wrote it up a memorandum for his home office informing it of the method by which we agreed on the number.

·         Today the engineer informed us that as they have done the work, the new price was too low.

·         I will not renegotiate the price.

·         This is not because I am a hard ass but because I haven't had a meeting with the engineer that has been shorter than 2 hours (the aforementioned meeting was meant to last 15 minutes), and I don't think I can summon enough determination to do another meeting so soon.

·         There is a cow chewing on her upraised hind leg outside my door as I'm writing this.

·         There is often a cow outside my door.

·         As an American in Africa, I think I'm contractually obligated to make a mention of something called a jacaranda tree (or maybe a bush?), but I have no idea what this tree (bush) is. Obviously.

·         Sarah has begun cooking. Three of the last four nights she has prepared food for our administrative staff.

·         Dishes Sarah has prepared: Indian eggplant, curried okra, spaghetti with tomato sauce.

·         Sarah is cooking using a wood fire. The food doesn't reflect that massive limitation at all. In fact, I'll probably regain the 5 kg I've lost since we've been here sooner than later.

·         While I was working in our house and Sarah was on our back porch chopping vegetables with two of our girls, 12-year-old Lily Jane and 13-year-old Muja Joyce, I overheard the following exchange- Muja: My mother used to make this... She was so happy. Now she died. Lily: My father died. I cried and cried. There was a short pause, then Lily began laughing, Muja joined and they went on with chopping.

·         More than anything, exchanges like that are why I'm so happy Sarah is cooking. The girls love to cook with her, and they haven't had someone here to act as their mother since, well, ever.

·         I took Lily to the hospital the other day for a case of stomach cramps.

·         We were at the hospital for four hours, I kid you not.

·         While we were sitting in the open air waiting room, under the tin roof, with the paint peeling off the walls, the hospital employees brought out a TV and put on a DVD.  It was completely surreal.

·         Uploading photos takes forever here, so I can't show you the million cute, wonderful, or brilliant things that the kids are constantly doing.

·         Not numbered among those million things are the kids who became so excited about moving into their new home that they stayed home from school today to help us paint.

·         They made this decision without our information or consent.

·         We did not let them paint.

·         Also, we couldn't send them late to school because students who arrive late to their school are sent home.

·         That policy doesn't make sense to me either.

·         Numbered among the million things is the handful of 6-8 year old girls who crowded around an old mattress that they had laid out on the ground, and when the mosque next door to us began the call to prayer repeatedly knelt down, pressing their faces to the ground, calling out "Allahu Akbar," and giggling like banshees.

·         I'm not sure our neighbors like us.

·         Except Sylve, who is constantly stopping by and is constantly drunk. She likes to steal our sugar when we're not looking. She also like to throw rocks not at but in the general direction of our children. She also likes to threaten to beat them. And to randomly break into screeching, wailing sobs. And to stand in rooms where our children are trying to study and yell very random things such as, "Organization Airport!"

·         There's a long story behind why she yells things like that, but it'll have to wait.

·         We've tried to be patient with her, but we're getting to a point where we just can't have her around. We've set boundaries with her (like, "don't come here when you've been drinking"), and she's ignored them. She's becoming increasingly agitated and stubborn lately. We've had long discussions about what to do and settled on ignoring her.

·         If you have ideas for how to convince 60 kids to ignore the drunk lady who is standing in front of them saying, "Organization Airport" and cursing their (deceased) mothers, we are open to hearing them. 

Things you should know about our first two weeks in Sudan

· We have sat through a series of epic meetings, many of which were longer than Avatar. I need you to imagine every day sitting through Avatar two or three times, all the while fully aware that there are things that feel much more important than watching Avatar, but you know that for those things to go well you have to keep watching Avatar. But as a result, we will soon have a weekly schedule for our administrative staff, we are revising the job descriptions for many of them to take advantage of people’s unique skills, we have developed a fundraising plan for the children’s home to reach full funding and become more self-sufficient, we have prepared enough rooms in the children’s new home that the kids will be able to move in once we have color paint, and we have now literacy tested every one of our 60 kids.

· Sarah has drawn up a plan for her first garden, which will be located right outside of our house. In the picture you can see that she has already begun composting to prepare for planting.

BTW, doesn't our house look totally comfy?

· I have not yet shaved my face, except for above and below my lips. The amount of facial hair I have grown is so embarrassingly little that I will not take a photo of it. Sarah does not like said facial hair and says that I look like an ugly version of Wolverine. We still love each other, though. I know this because it was verified yesterday by 11-year-old Lily Jane in an exchange that went something like this:
Lily: Seth, you love Sarah?
Me: Yes. I love Sarah. I love Sarah so much.
Lily: Sarah also say she love you! (squeals of delight)
· She has also begun training our two monkeys, with some early success. The young children now know that if the male monkey, Johnny Cash, runs at them they should sternly shout “NO!” and if he continues they should throw a rock at him. Some of them also believe they should then beat him with a stick. Needless to say, Johnny Cash is becoming aware that he is not the head monkey on this compound.
· On Thursday, a very hospitable man with kind of creepy eyes approached me in the market and offered to help me find everything I needed. I kindly declined his help, because I like to find my footing in the market on my own (which on this day resulted in me finding the much coveted Carnation Drinking Chocolate). He asked me where I was staying, I told him, and then yesterday he just randomly showed up while I was speaking with some of our boys – reminding me again just how much we need a fence. I kindly told him that he couldn’t just show up and escorted him off of the premises, again kindly. When I returned, the boys informed me that, “this man is a very bad man.” The phrase “bad man” could mean someone who drinks too much or gets into fights, but in this case, they informed me, it means something more. “He is a murderer who hangs men by their necks.” Alright, then. For some reason, the real unsavory characters always find me. It’s good to have some friends in town.
· Our dog, Simba, has lost half of his eye in a fight. Simba is truly disgusting, and for your sake I am not including a photo of him.
· For good measure, on Thursday I put Awilo on the roof of one of the houses. 

What 8-year-old doesn't love crawling around like a monkey on a tin roof on a hot day?

He promised me that he would jump down when he grew tired of being on the roof, and I promised him that when he jumped I would catch him. It is worth noting that this exact same set of promises was made in 2008, and when the time came what really happened was Awilo tried to work up the courage, failed to do so, and sat on the edge of the roof crying until I climbed up on a chair and pulled him down (some of you are now thinking, “should this guy really be in charge of 60 children?” I respond, “this is why it’s only an interim appointment.”) You will be gratified to know that this time, Awilo held up his end of the bargain, and you will be further gratified to know that I held up mine.

Amana

She is walking adeptly over the rocks and stones barefooted as she takes my hand. She looks up at me and I am somehow compelled to pick her up and carry her even though I know she can walk the rest of the way on her own. She accepts the ride joyfully clinging to this strange white woman.


Within a few days I have wiped her nose, comforted her after falls and run ins with Johnny Cash (the monkey not the man), coaxed her to sleep with songs and stories, blown up her balloons, convinced her that 3 year olds can indeed sleep during the day and evening when everyone else is awake, beamed with delight as she sings and dances in front of the whole church and taught her to defend herself with stones against the aforementioned monkey. She is Amana, she is our new daughter. Oh and she has 60 siblings - we're going to parent them too.

This feels most overwhelming when I realize I am the only woman living here and therefore the only mother, Amana picked up on this quicker than me. She wants a mom so bad she has decided I will just have to do and so it is.