more new kids and homesick :(

Well, this week has been a bit scary! I have still been ill so on Wednesday I think it was the nurse told me to go to the clinic to get checked for malaria - and so I did - and fortunately it was negative for malaria. The question that remains is - whats wrong with me? Why am I still ill? So the nurse gave me something stronger to kill the parasites and worms! So hopefully that will work. We'll see!

This week has seen the arrival of 2 new kids. The first to arrive is called Ashraf (sp), he is 2 1/2 and was abandoned in the local bus park - where the police found him and the probation officer brought him to us. He also suffers from Kwashikor so his face and tummy are swollen. The other day he was sat on the toy boda-boda and was collecting wood (from the tree that had just been cut down) was breaking it on his knee and making a little firewood pile! This gives us some idea that he comes from the village and that this may have been one of his daily chores! He is a very good football though and we have been playing at kicking the ball around.
The other new kid is approx 11 months old, however he weighs only 8 pounds! He is severely malnourished, his ribs sticking out from his chest and his limbs stick thin. We didn't think that he would make it through his first night, however he is being well taken care of by one of the volunteers and seems to be doing better.

Pre-school os going well, although I've not been teaching much this week, just doing lesson planning and organising things. The mad-venture people have been doing a fantastic job and Im so glad to have them here.
Im finding it hard to understand the Mamas at the moment - and I don't mine in literally. They can be so affectionate with the kids and so loving and caring, yet they can be the complete opposite - they can just beat the crap out of the kids because they think they are disciplining (sp) them. Now there's disciplining and beating them - these Mamas make no distinction. The other day I was upstairs in the baby home doing some planning and I hear one of the kids screaming - so I look out the window to see whats going on and I see two Mamas pinning down one of the boys, pulling his pants down and hitting him at least 6 times on the bum with a wooden spoon, and we're not talking a little slap - I mean a proper hard whack so much so that I could hear it from where I was! I know that if you do smack your children - you should never do it in anger - but these Mamas are so cross when they punish them. On the positive side I think that the reward chart is having a positive affect on the kids and I think that the kids really understand the concept. Even one of our naughtiest kids has been so good this week and for the first time since we started this she was able to come out with us on reward day.
Yesterday I visited another orphanage in a more rural part. I wanted to see how other orphanages compare to ours and how they do things. I realsie that our kids are very lucky compared to many others. Our kids are very clean, they always have clean clothes and 3 meals a day, lots of love and attention from the Mamas and the volunteers. I know that things like clothes is superficial but its important to Ugandans that kids have one set of 'smart' clothes. In many ways our kids are spoilt - they cry if they cant have a coke, they cry if they cant have their own way. Yet the kids in the village are so used to having nothing, yet they're so happy and content having very little. Our kids are so americanised! I wish they were more Ugandan because when they don't get adopted and they have to go to an orphanage for older kids which is less priveleged or back home with their extended families these kids are going to learn life the hard way - they are going to have to work hard, they're not going to be able to throw tantrums because they want coke and not water, or because they want more food.

I forgot to tell you all last week about the agricultural fair I visited with a friend. I decided to take Duane along - as it always does him some good to be out of the orphanage and walking! So the fair was basically peope selling their fruit/veg and various other products as well as craft stalls. There were also cows, goats and chickens on show as well as a few tractors. There was also a few fair rides. Now Im very wary of fast and very dangerous looking rides at the Loughborough Fair, so there was no way anyone was going to get me on an African fair ride! And as it turned out I made the right decision...I saw a man on a ( I cant remember the name - but it spins around really fast and your sitting in a sit and I think the ones in England go up and down and spin indivdually, anyway it was a really simpe version of that, but the seats were so big and there was a measly metal rod that you pull done on top of yourself - to supposedly keep you from falling out!) the ride was going really really fast and then I turned to see this man holding onto the bottom of the seat - he had slipped and was dangling from the bottom of the seat! he was screaming and yelling and they didnt even stop the ride or slow it down - they just waited - for what felt like 5 minutes to stop the ride and get him off - so anyway this guy had managed to swing his little seat - which was attached to the top of the ride by chains - to the nearest one to him which happened to have someone esle in it - so comsequently his little seat was swinging and twisting around and he ended up screaming at the guy to let go of his seat and the poor guy ended up slipping out of his seat - so twi guys were hainging on to the bottom of the seat for dear life!! suffice to say Im never going on a fair ride again!! EVER!

This afternoon I am moving out of the volunteer house just for the weekend - as I need some peace and quiet and a bit of time on my own. It's been about 5 weeks that I lived at the v-house with about 20 other people so I am going to enjoy a full nights sleep undisturbed by people singing at the top of their voices at 2.30am, or people screaming or running around the house like headless chickens! Ill be staying in the house above the orphanage - so Ill be able to hear screaming babies and such but its got to be better than hearing a high pitched American screaming at the top of their lungs! It also means I'll have access to MSN over the weekend - yeah!
Yesterday whilst out in town with the kids I saw the biggest insect I have ever seen in my whole life! It was about this big (c lines) --------------------------------------------------I wish I was exagerrating too but Im really not! One of the locals said it was a cockroach - As long as it can't fly I dont care what it is!!