The Weekend.

This is me and Linda.

She is 7.

I met Linda on Saturday, when Ina and I went to spend the night again at the kids home. and Dan brought her and big sister Stella there after he found them living in bad conditions with their grandma. Both parents died a few years ago, and the grandma is very old and has no way to support the girls. Stella is happy and healthy and fit right in with the rest of the 26 kids; Linda is very quiet and does move around a lot, mainly due to this infected wound on her leg (not for the faint of heart):

Even when the bandage is touched, she flinches.

Along with this, Linda is very malnourished and withdrawn, tired, and fatigued. Although no one knows her parents cause of death, because they both died so quickly within such short time time, it was most likely AIDS. And because of that, there is a very good chance Linda is HIV positive. She goes in for the test today, and to have her leg treated.

If she tests positive, she cannot live at the kids home because of the risk of infecting others. She will most likely be given the ART medication and sent back to her grandma’s with food provisions.

We all prayed very hard for her this morning, that God would give her peace either way. I prayed for God to give me peace with this. As Dan says, a lot of things are easy to understand and make sense of here because of the corruption and lack of resources, but a 7-year old orphaned girl with AIDS is not one of them.

On a happier note, we had another great sleepover at the kids home. We decided to try a ‘grieving exercise’ by giving everyone crayons and a small blank book, and having them write what they remembered about their parents, other siblings, former house, etc. Because every child at HBF is an orphan, I expected this to be a bit emotional, but thanks to their great house parents - Ben and Virginia - who discuss it often with them, they were all very open and excited to draw their old homes and write down the names of their parents and family. After ugali and sukumowiki for dinner, we all sat around the candlelit table and Ben asked each child about their story. For nearly all the kids, they lived good lives with their families until their parents deaths, and then went to live with grandparents who were either abusive or neglectful, or simply lacked the resources to feed them and/or get them to school each day. Every child said they felt peaceful at HBF because they didn’t have to worry about food, and happy because they knew someone would take them to school every day. Just those 2 things alone give them a world of security.

Some pictures from the weekend:

The kids reading their stories before bed.

Valentine with baby Dan on her back,

and Simiyu, with the most stunning smile in the world.

Mama Virginia making sukumowiki
in the kitchen with Caro and Susan.


The luxurious bathroom facilities, called the 'cho'.


Oscar, Emily, Mwangi, Valley, Jackie, Loya and I,
goofing off before dinner.



Teddy and Stella doing dishes.


Patrick and I, eating lollies in the wheelbarrow.

With Mama Virginia and half of the crew before we left.

In other news, this week I got stung by one of these!

I was eating dinner and felt something cold and wet on my neck, and when I reached up to flick it off, a bunch of the his evil little hairs lodged themselves into the skin on my hands. Meredith got most of them out with a rag and kerosene; the rest of them itch like craaaaaaazy. Good times.