Now I know what monsoons are!  It has been raining almost every day at our baby home in Arusha, Tanzania; huge, blowing, blustery rains.  It has dusted all the leaves and splashed everything with such vibrant greens its almost painful.  Below is our meditation park with the scripture benches and fruit trees in front of the volunteer house at Neema Village. 

I have also learned this week that tin roofs can leak and it is very difficult to find a misplaced nail hole in a tin roof!  We awoke to find that due to so much rain, a hunk of the ceiling had fallen to the floor in the crawlers playroom last week.  Thank God they were not in there, it fell right where they sit on their mats. Even out in the villages everything is green and lush as Elfie from Germany and Linda from Texas found walking the trail in the Maasai village after church Sunday.

We moved little preemies, Neema Grace and Eliah, out of isolation this week.  They have gained enough weight to move into the small baby room.  Their new roommates are Sarah, Isac, Abasi, Zablon, Ezekeli and Loitapuaki

It was a good thing since we needed the isolation room on Friday when we brought home a mother with three little week old triplet babies from the hospital.  The mom has a bad infection from a C-section and is very sick and running a fever. 

We sent her back to the hospital to be admitted with an IV drip but within a few hours she was back at Neema after refusing to stay at the hospital.  She had cried when she left and begged us to take care of her babies so it was no big surprise she refused to stay in the hospital.  Below pictured the mom asleep in our isolation room at Neema with her three little babies in their beds.  We have a full time nanny helping her around the clock.

  Her home in Arusha where she is living is not finished, there is no running water or electricity in the house and there was no apparent food nor preparations for the babies.   Her husband was with her but said he had to leave town for work in a few days.  Since she could barely stand up she could not possibly haul buckets of water to the house while constantly nursing one or more of the babies and still prepare food for herself and her other little 4 year old boy.   She is a teacher and is so thankful for our help.

Social Welfare evaluated the situation and said the babies would probably not survive if they went home.  A couple of our volunteers and driver bundled them up and brought them all to Neema.   Fortunately we have two helpful volunteers here right now, Dr. Jon Walker, an ER doc, with his wife Sarah and their three children from Joshua, Texas and Sharon Bonogosfsky-Parker, a pediatric nurse from Billings, Mt. 

Sharon also teaches moms good breast feeding skills so she was showing the mother how to nurse two babies at a time and also pump for the third baby. 

Dr. Jon was able to diagnose that the little boy triplet had a broken leg.  So back to the hospital for this little guy pictured below.  Poor babe has a cast on his little finger size leg!  They think it most likely happened at the birth. 

Maria’s two friends from Germany, Elfie Schaller and Ria Sterzer, are volunteering for a month at Neema and started a three day sewing class for women yesterday in our Mothering Center. 

 We were also blessed this month to have one of our board members and our grant writer come for a visit.  Dr. Sue Hamby from Temple, Texas enjoyed spending time with some of our nannies.

May your lives be full of good things.