An Atypical Day

So here is an example of an atypical day at the orphanage (no, that's not a typo).We are in the middle of malaria season. We have to keep a careful eye on all the babies because they get really sick really fast. And malaria is what the majority of babies die from during malaria season. And if you catch it early enough it's easy enough to get rid of.We have two nurses. They just finished nursing school and have left for a month and a half to do an internship. This is good for them. Not good for us. Nichole did meds for one day and then Nongewende, the woman who works with the toddlers/preschoolers, decided that she wanted to learn. We don't one hundred percent trust her to do them correctly but she is our best option, someone needs to know how to do them when we aren't here. I had never done meds all by myself. I've helped Nichole and I've helped Nongewende, but it's never been my sole responsibility...until yesterday. Nichole was sick. It was Nongewende's day off. So, the job fell to me.Which isn't normally a big deal until I started taking temperatures and we have three with fevers. So I gave out meds. Started a few on malaria treatment and thought we were ok. As the day wore on we got more and more fevers. And more and more weird poop things going on (diarrhea, black poop, yellow poop). A couple babies threw up in the morning (all of their meds!!) It seemed that every time I left a room to get something, by the time I came back there was something wrong with someone else. We ended up having five sick babies. Who all had to be watched carefully all day. One baby was particularly scary. He's our newest baby. He just came on Saturday night. We named him Daniel because his parents hadn't yet named him (a common thing herewith such a high infant mortality rate). He is 14 days old (as of today, the 18th), he was born a month premature and he weighs a little more than a kilo. He is tiny. And yesterday he had a fever of 102. I did a lot of praying yesterday. It was a scary day because these kids go downhill so fast if its not caught early enough. It seems as though the prayers were answered, because this morning we only had one fever and two cases of vomiting (and one of the ones who vomited had the fever) so only two sick ones....And I haven't checked on them since about ten oclock this morning (Nichole is feeling better and is able to help now!!!) but they were both doing ok.

On top of all that Adeline left with her father yesterday morning. She went to the village for a few days. She should be coming back here before she leaves permanently because she didn't take all her stuff with her. We had a few more hard conversations (one in which there was a misunderstanding and she thought I said that it was my idea that she leave...which was definitely not true; but she was excited to go when it was time. So that's good. It makes my heart feel better. And I know it's the best thing for her. And I will be seeing her most every day because she is going to go to school here.