“Phillip Flies Home”
Last Monday we traveled up in the mountains past the banana grooves to find the new home of one of our adopted babies. In some places it was not much more than a cow path. These roads give you what we like to call the Tanzanian massage!
 |
|
Road up to Phillip Wood’s house.
|
One of Neema’s cutest babies, Phillip had been at Neema since he was abandoned at the hospital. He has been adopted and we were traveling out to check on him.
If you follow our blog
you will remember Phillip’s special story. He was very tiny when abandoned so he spent a couple of months in the hospital until he was big enough to bring home to Neema. We named him Phillip after Phillip Wood, the only American on the Malaysian flight that went down a couple of years ago. My sister, Lottie McCormack in Edmond Ok, and Phillip Wood’s mother were friends, pregnant at the same time and their two boys grew up together in Oklahoma and later were roommates at Oklahoma Christian. When Phillip’s plane went down Lottie called and asked if we would name a baby after Phillip.
So little Tanzanian Phillip Wood came to live at Neema. A smiley, happy baby, he quickly became a favorite baby of everyone who came to visit Neema.
So now the rest of the story. We blogged a few months or so ago about Phillip being adopted and this was our first trip out to check his new home. Simone, a volunteer and her mom, and Angel, our social worker and Mama Musa, the Neema Manager and I traveled the endless or so it felt, rocky path up the mountains for a visit to see how Phillip was doing. His new mom and dad met us as we drove up to the house.
The cement home was surrounded outside by bananas trees, flowers and chickens scratching in the yard, There was a car and a motorcycle at the house so his family seems more affluent than the average Tanzanian family. They graciously fed us snacks of boiled eggs and bananas.
Inside the home there was furniture and sweet pictures of Jesus on the walls. Phillip was afraid of us at first and kept his head buried in his momma’s chest. But we had brought toys (the secret weapon for all children) so Phillip was soon playing and smiling like the happy little boy we knew at Neema. Simone, a three time volunteer from Germany at Neema, had brought a wooden duck so she and Phillip were soon quacking all over the floor. After eating with the family and then playing for a while with Phillip, we said our goodbys and headed home.
Be watching for our new book titled “Phillip Flies Home” from Guardian Angel Publishing. It is Phillips story told in the form of a little African Honey Guide Bird and the fierce Honey Badger. It is quite a poignant story, you will love it.
On the way back from Phillip’s house we stopped to check in on another abandoned baby, Michael, all grown up now, and his adoptive family. Michael had been abandoned on a front porch and the people who found him adopted him, which happens fairly often. He now has grandparents, a dad, uncles, aunts and cousins who love him and he is in school.
That is little Michael with Big Michael to the left. We estimated he was about three months old when he was found on the porch. Below Angel, Michael and Dorris on the front porch.
