This morning a mother brought her very malnourished son to the Child Center. He was 1 ½ years old and only weighed 4.8 kilos which is 10 ½ pounds. As with many of these severely malnourished children they are not crawling or walking on time because they are just too weak. The mother said that the child refuses all types of food but he loves to drink water. The mother said that she has taken him to the doctor many times. If his weight does not improve the next time he comes, Steve will probably want to send him to have his blood tested to make sure he does not have diabetes; considering the amount of water he drinks. This morning we mixed up some weaning mix; he drank a little bit of it and then begged for water. The mother came with her friend and she said that they would force the baby to eat the porridge. We discourage force feeding! Many of these children have been sick for most of their little lives and medicine is forced down them; we don’t want them to connect food with medicine. We loaded them up with weaning mix, Cerelac (cereal and formula mix), peanut protein paste, oil and vitamins. Hopefully we will see a weight gain next time they come.
The roofers finished putting the metal roofing sheets on the building this afternoon. The roof looks nice. When we went back to the jobsite after the men closed for the day we put all the wood inside the new building because it was threatening to rain. It is late in the season for rain; we have not had any rain in about 3 weeks. We were pleasantly surprised when we got a big rain. I was more than annoyed when I realized that Nazo had cleaned out the water collection system that collects water from the roof of the mission house and funnels it into the cistern because he forgot to reconnect the collection pipes and we missed the greatest portion of the rain water!
Rasheed, one of the big immigration officers, paid us a visit this morning. We have known Rasheed for years; he was originally from Yendi. When we first met him he was a young man working at the immigration office in Tamale. We have watched him move up through the ranks and run into him every now and again. He worked for a while in the Accra airport and now he is in Tema. He comes back to Yendi on holiday because his family still lives here and he calls Yendi home. He is presently building a huge warehouse depot outside of Yendi on the road leading to Tamale. He plans on making it a hub of distribution for packaged food items.
Thank you for all you do for us and for the people of Ghana. We really appreciate the help!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
