We are spending the night in Tamale because we have lots of business to do. Steve has to renew his Ghanaian nurses license, we have to visit the lawyer, pick up the Child Center’s yearly license, go to the accountant / auditor and get the annual audit, pay for the Child Center’s liability insurance, pay for the insurance on all the vehicles, have the red truck serviced, look for a new scale to weigh the babies on, and check to see if they have printed the new Konkomba Bibles yet. There is no way we could do all of that in one day without a vehicle. Getting the oil changed is an ordeal to say the least! It will take them at least 4 hours to get the truck serviced. I have no idea what they are doing that takes them so long. This afternoon we got the insurances taken care of, stopped at the lawyer’s office, bought brooms/rakes for Donkey to rake leaves with and stopped at one of the stores to see if they had a baby scale but they did not. Maybe we will have better luck tomorrow. Steve also stopped by the Nurses and Midwives Council about his nurse’s license renewal. He has to go to one of the banks to pay for the renewal before they can begin processing his license.
This morning a severely malnourished child came to the Center. The little girl was 1year 5 months and she only weighed 5 kilo which is about 11 pounds. She was like a skeleton. She had been abandoned by her mother and her grandmother is trying to take care of her with the help of an older teenage cousin. The family reports that she is able to eat but obviously she is not eating well or enough. The teenage girl brought her this morning. We mixed up about ¼ of a cup of cereal/formula and asked the teenager to feed the child. The little girl ate but it took her over 30 minutes to eat the food. We explained that it takes the very malnourished children a long time to eat and lots of patience to get them fed. Eating is exhausting work. Her name is Adamu. She does not crawl, or walk, she only has 2 teeth and she is completely bald. After she finished eating her little tummy was tight as a drum and she got that snake-eyed stare babies get just before they fall asleep. We encouraged the teenager to take over the feeding of the child because she was very good with her. The grandmother is old and probably too busy with everyday chores to spend the amount of time it takes to feed a malnourished child many times each day.
Donkey’s son has finished his training at the police academy; he will not come home until after the March 6th Independence Day celebration because all the new officers are going to march in the parade. Hopefully it won’t take too long for him to be posted to his new position.
Thank you for the love, prayers and support.
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
