Zorash came back to work this morning. She is feeling better but she is still very weak! She said that today is the first day that she has come out of her room and that she was just going to try and take it easy today to make sure that she did not have a relapse.
Amama did not come to work today; she is sick. She has some sort of intestinal distress; mostly diarrhea. Makes us wonder if Amama and Zorash have the same thing. Whatever they have we do not want!
The very malnourished baby came back this morning. It has only been 4 days since we have seen him but we were hoping for a tiny weight gain. He did not gain weight but he did not lose weight either. The mother said that he ate the food we sent but we doubt it. The baby just sat on his mom’s lap whimpering. We suspected he was hungry. We had Meri mix up some instant cereal that has milk in it. As soon as he saw the porridge he started opening his mouth like a little bird. He drank quite a bit but then he started to gag so we gave him some water and then we thinned down the porridge. He is 2 years old and he let his mom know when he did not want any more. We told her just to wait for a little while and then to offer it to him again. He drank porridge 4 or 5 times; he only took a small amount at a time. As soon as he had the first few gulps of porridge he stopped crying. Poor little thing was hungry. After a little while he started to doze. We will not see the child for 3 more weeks because the Child Center will be closed for the workers annual leave. We sent the mother lots of food but with 6 other mouths to feed we are worried about the little guy getting his share.
Since today was the last day that the Child Center will be open for 3 weeks we gave all the orphan babies enough formula to keep them well fed until we reopen. The caregivers were surprised and grateful that we were going to give them extra formula even though we would not be open. We can’t have the babies going hungry just because there is a holiday! While we were helping the workers fill out their annual returns we got to thinking about Nana Bekum. He is retired and has collected all of his Social Security money so he is not required to pay those taxes but we wondered if he had to fill out an annual return which we have not been doing since he retired. Steve went to the tax office to find out and sure enough he has to fill out a tax return and we were supposed to be filling out a tax return on him each month. He retired at the end of 2016 so we are going to have to back file on him. Normally he does not make enough money to have to pay in each month but he will have to pay on his farming gift. Please! If it is not one thing it is 2 others!
It is trying to rain; we can hear a little thunder in the distance and as usual the electricity just went off. We were so happy to have the generator because they had the electricity off all over the Northern part of Ghana all day Saturday and all day Sunday! It was an announced “lights off”; they were doing some sort of maintenance.
Keep us in your prayers,
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
