Always saying goodbye...

 Today, I saw Sarah with baby Moses, and I realised that Sarah, and also my other girls, have had to say goodbye so many times!! Sarah is crazy about baby Moses, when she can, she walks around with him, sit with him and even change his diaper (but she prefers the staff to do that!!). Moses is ready to go home again, he is now doing good on the ARV's and his time in Amecet will come to an end. Sarah will miss him a lot and so will I, because it is such a sweet little boy!

The same with Mary, she really loves Rose, but she is also gone back to her mother. Mary is still missing her, she was asking the other day if we had heard anything about her.

Helen has had also many friends in Amecet, at the moment there are some children of her age to play with. But when there are none of her age, she plays with the little ones.

Even little Catherine has had to say goodbye to several little friends. The last one was Charles, who was a very good friend to her.

She did find a new friend in Anna, this picture was from yesterday, playing in the sandbox and then throwing sand on each other is great fun!!

 

 

It is so good to see that the girls are still open for new friends and that they are willing to be a friend, even for a season.

A long and difficult delivery..

I have been writing before, about Doreen, she is a 15 year old girl, who is pregnant and her boyfriend tried to kill her. He cut her with a panga and left her for death in the bush. But she survived.. she misses 2 fingers at her right hand and lost the use of her left arm. She has big scars on her body from the deep cuts of the panga. You can read more about her in previous posts. Her baby was due on the 6th of November, so we were a bit anxious about her, the last 10 days. Doreen is struggling with the fact that she is soon getting a baby in her arms from the guy who wanted to kill her. She is not sure if she wants the baby, she didn't want to think about a name and she didn't want to go to the hospital for the delivery. But we can't deliver the baby in Amecet, so it was all not easy.

Two nights ago, at 2.30 am, I get a phonecall from Amecet, please come, Doreen has contractions. I had talked with my girls about this, and they felt fine with me, going in the night to Doreen, if neccesary. So I raced to Amecet, where Janneke and Esther were waiting with Doreen, we drove to the hospital. Doreen had contraction every 4 minutes, but when they examined her in the hospital, there was no sign of a fast delivery. we had to wait! All the beds were full, so we got a bed in a small ward, which was for special gynocologic cases. There were many moquito's and on the picture below, you see Doreen in the far corner, she was very unhappy and had still a lot of pain.

 We stayed the whole night and the next day with her, every now and then, we took her for review, but there was no progress, Doreen had the whole time contractions. we walked around with her, tried to let her drink more, but still there was no progress. I tried to contact the doctor where we had been going for our pre-natal check-ups, he also works in the hospital, but we only saw him late in the evening. He started to talk about a ceasarian operation. I agreed with him, because Doreen got so exhausted. But Doreen was freaking out and refused. He send us back to her bed and told us to counssel her and let her sleep over it. In the morning we would see what to do. I went back to the hospital again in the morning and Doreen had changed her mind, we could go for the operation. She was tired, had a lot of pain and still the doctor found no progress when he examined her. So we were going for the ceasarian!

She got a catheter and an IV line and we had to roll her to the theatre. As you can see on this picture, it wasn't an easy ride!!

 This is in the building wherer they operate.Lois and Esther are waiting with us, she will go through those doors to the operating room.

 We were sitting outside to wait and after 30 minutes we heard a cry!!! Then a bit later the nurse comes out with the newborn baby and I got her in my arms... A lot of hair, a beautiful little girl, weighing 3.4 kg!!Some time later they wheeled Doreen out and we went with her again over those little paths, back to her bed in the ward. She was in pain, esspecially during the trip back to her bed.

 We cleaned her up and put her baby besides her. She was not touching her, but was watching her!! She still doesn't want to talk about a name, later, when we put the baby at her breast, to drink, she let us doing that, but didn't take any effort to touch or help her baby.It will be a very difficult process! We contacted her family, asking her mother to come and help her in the hospital, but up till now, nobody came. So we take turns and stay with her day and night, I am really proud of my staff, everybody is willing to help and take her turn. My heart aches, when I see this hurting teenager struggling with this situation. She is a real adolesence, angry, not co-operative, not grateful, complaining, but she is hurting....

Please pray for this beautiful little girl and for her hurting and traumatised mother.

A week full of oposites..

On Monday, Michel went to school!!! It was a big event for us, Michel lives in Amecet for more than a year, he was left behind in the hospital by his mother. He is a bit spastic and can't talk or sit by his own. Now there is a place in Soroti where they work with children like him. In a group of 10 children. They pick him every day and bring him home at 6 pm. We are really happy for him, we believe Michel can do so much more, but we can't help him much further.

Monday and Tuesday was the BIG day for the Primary 7 classes, the exams!! They are very important for them and 5 schools were combined in Nakatunya Primary school to sit for these two days. I went to bring them lunch on Tuesday, You can see the 20 pupils enjoying a special lunch with soda(!) and then they were going for their last paper. They all said they were doing well. I am so proud of my daughter Sarah, who is one of them. She made it up to P7!! There is much reason to be thankful!! 

Then the sad news about Naome, it kind of paralyses you, you don't feel you want to do anything, but Doreen had started to have labour pains. It is very hard to get Doreen talking, she is very quiet and she wants to get her baby in Amecet, I don't want that, we are not a labour ward. So I felt I had to take her to check in the hospital. We were there for several hours, because the doctor was operating. While we were waiting I got a request to come and see a lady who got quadruplets!! The baby's were all born alive and were doing fair. Only the last two baby's were very small and a bit cold. The mother was very confused and while I was there, she refused all the treatment.  Later when the doctor came he asked me if we could help with the two smallest baby's. I told him we would come back to talk with the parents. Doreen was still okay, so we went home again. But the doctor said I could always call him, even at night and we have to come on Monday, if the baby is not born yet, they will then induce labour. After I brought Doreen back to Amecet, I went, together with Elias, back to the hospital, to talk with the parents. The mother was doing better, but the father refused to given the two smallest children to us, because he wanted them to go home. The people there wanted to see them. It is up to them, so we told the father that he could always bring them, later, when he felt the children need more care. In the evening we had the arrival of our Dutch visitors: Janneke, our nurse, who will come and work with us and the Alice, who comes for one month and our good old friends: Joke and Bernard, it was so good to see them all!!!
Then Yesterday, Thursday, it was court day for Doreen. The guy who wanted to kill her, the father of her baby, is in jail and yesterday he had to appear in court. Doreen was the witness. Elias and I went with her. She was a bit scared. We were there from 8 am till 7 pm!! We saw and heard interesting cases, sentences were being spoken out and the last person was our case. The man agreed that he was guilty, so that was simple. It was only the defile case, the attempting murder case will be later. The verdict was 3 years for defilement. We were very tired after a day on the very hard court benches. The good thing was that Doreen had no labour pains!!
Today we went to pay our last respect to Naome. She was to be buried in the village. We went with a car full of people from Amecet. Many wanted to come, but the car was full and there should also be people at home, to stay with the children!
There were many people at the burial, I think at least 400 or 500 people. It has something good, the coffin is under the tree and all the people around it.

It is good to see that many people loved her and wanted to bring her to her last resting place.

Dear Naome, rest in Peace!

"Aunti" Naome went to be with Jesus..

Many of you, who read this blog, may know Naome, she has worked in Amecet for many years and she also was  in the group who came to Holland in 2009. Last Friday, I got the news that she was in the hospital. I went to see her and spent that day many hours, just holding her hand and be there beside her. Naome married in 2009 and has been trying to get pregnant. She had 5 miscarriages and now she lost again her baby, after 6 months of pregnancy. She had pre-eclampsia and her blood pressure was very high. She was unconscious. The doctors told the family to bring her to Mulago hospital in Kampala. After some doubts if she would make it to Kampala, they organised the ambulance and she left for Kampala. By phone we were updated and we also gave money towards the transport and treatment in Kampala. When something like this happens, everybody gives, because it comes abrupt and the family is not prepared. Today, at 8 am, I got the news that Naome passed away at 7 am, she never regained consciousness.

This is how I remember Naome, singing and dancing!!! She could gather all the little ones together, and that is no easy task, every time one crawls away or beat the other on the head with a music instrument. But they loved it and she had a real gift for it. Later she also organised the older children with singing and dancing. We had several times we sang in the church. 

Naome, you were loved by the Amecet family, we will miss you!!! But I know that you will dance and sing in Heaven around the Throne of Jesus. I even think that they have akongo's (Thumb piano's) in Heaven for you to play on! We will not forget you!

Watching the eclipse..

Amazing that this eclipse was so good to see, right in our yard in Soroti!! I heard that 30.000 people came to Uganda to see this special event! (Good for the economy!!) I went to ask the clinic next door for an unexposed X-ray, because there was a lot of publicity about the danger for the eyes. I got one and cut it into pieces and everybody got a piece. We watched and followed it for about 2 hours! It was fun and you could see it very well through the X-ray! They say  it happens about every 500 years, so we are lucky and today... the sun was shining and life goes on like it did before the eclipse!!!!

Many new children..

For quite a while we didn't get older children, we got mostly baby's and toddlers. But it seems to change, because this week we got three older children. Left is Gipas (12) then in the middle Julius (9) and at the right Angela (8). The last couple of days I have been busy checking them out, getting them registred in the HIV clinic for their ARV's. They are all three on the ARV medicines, but are not taking them right. Today we went for blood tests, to see how their blood levels are. It brings another atmosphere in the house than just the baby's. 

But the baby's are still coming.... 

This is Justin, he is 7 weeks old. His mother was roaming around in Soroti. They have been asking us to take the baby, to safeguard him. We first have been contacting the relatives, so we know that the baby has a place to go after Amecet. The parents told us that the baby was 1 month old, we couldn't believe that, he is even smiling and reacting when you talk to him. Today, Simon,went to the health centre where they told the baby was born and he found out that the baby is 7 weeks old now. So we have to rake him for immunization For the rest is it a cute little boy.

Yesterday at almost 6 pm, (I was just leaving..) baby Lawrence was brought. They had been calling us about him, the previous week, but they were not able to bring him, because of the bad roads. Baby Lawrence comes from Kotido, north of Soroti. The District where the Karomojong live. His mother went into labour when she was 7 months pregnant and she died after giving birth to Lawrence. It happened in the hospital, so the little baby, who only weighed 1.3 kg, went into the incubator. He was discharged a week ago, weighing 1.850. Today he weighed 2 kg!! He is very small, but he is alert and he drinks good. He will be with us for a while and then he will go back to his father and his grandmother. He was brought by the Probation officer from Kotido. 

Happy Birthday uncle Simon!!!

 We celebrated yesterday Simon's birthday, with balloons, cake and a present!

And here we are enjoying the cake and (of course) a soda! Simon is even wearing his birthday present already. We have some new children in Amecet, left is Gipas, he is 12 years old and at the right is Angel, she is 8 years old.

Uncle Simon, we wish you many more happy and fruitful years!!