Steve finished the Social Welfare report; now all we are waiting on is for the Social Welfare officer for the Yendi area to write a recommendation letter for the Child Center. He has always been prompt in writing the letters for us so we are not worried about getting it.
We went back to the motor vehicle office today to see if the “transfer of ownership” papers for the motorcycle we are trying to give to Timothy Niligrini came in. They had not; it seems that the lady who took the documents to Tamale fell sick and did not come back to Yendi. The officer said that he told her to take the documents to the bus station in Tamale and send them with the driver to Yendi. We will see how well that works. She might be too sick to go to the bus station. Maybe we will get them tomorrow.
This afternoon we went to town and bought 10 used bicycles for the church leaders and evangelists. It has been a long time since they got new used bicycles. We have to buy a total of 35 bicycles. After the 10 we bought today have been greased and repaired we will buy another batch of 10. The bicycle mechanic helped us negotiate the deal; he is the one we will pay to do the repairs and greasing. He was excited that we were buying so many bicycles. The guy selling them was happy to get the business and he reduced the price by 20 Cedis a bike (about 4 dollars a bike). I love a good deal! These bicycles cost 300 cedis which is about 55 dollars; we had to buy automatic valves, bike locks and bells for each bicycle. Some of the bicycles will have to have new tires; we figure that each bike will end up costing right around 75 dollars.
A severely malnourished baby came to the Center this morning. This was the first time that the baby had come. He was 1 ½ years old and weighed in at 3.2 kilos; which is slightly over 5 pounds. Babies are born weighing more than he weighed. The mother was complaining that he was not walking. Well, duh! He does not have the energy to walk. We asked the mother what he had for breakfast. She said that she had not given him anything to eat today and it was about 10:30. The mother looked like she was poor; we asked her if she had eaten this morning; she said that she had T-zed (corn meal mush) but she had not offered any to the child. Zorash figures that the T-zed was left from last night’s meal and she was afraid to give it to the child for fear it made him have diarrhea; there is no refrigeration in most of these villages. We loaded the little guy up with weaning mix, oil, peanut paste, and vitamins. He gobbled up the kulikuli (the solids left from making peanut oil). The mother has 5 other children. If he can get some food to eat he should gain weight.
The child that has no use of his arms (his elbows won’t bend) came back to the Center this morning. We had sent them to Yendi Hospital to see what the doctor said and to possibly get an x-ray to see if the bones were actually in the elbows but something got mixed up in the translation and the doctor did not see her. She wanted to go to Tamale so we gave her the transport; maybe she will have better luck in Tamale.
Divine the evangelist just stopped by to pick up a crocheted hat for his wife. We had a few adult hats that we gave away with the children’s hats on Sunday when we visited Divine’s village. Divine’s wife Gladys did not get a hat and she really wanted one for herself. When we saw Divine in town this afternoon we told him to come to the mission house and get one for Gladys. We gave Divine a ball cap. He was happy.
Take care and have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
