Today is Youth Day in South Africa. It's a national holiday--everything's closed. Back in the 70's, during apartheid, there was a movement to have all the black schools be forced to learn & speak Afrikaans in their classes. This was on top of the government spending 15 times as much on white students as black students. So, this lead to demonstrations over the course of 8 months, and during that time over 700 youth were killed. After apartheid ended, they chose one day, June 16th, to honor those people who had been killed. (A little world history lesson for you).
So, this also meant no school. Which means the couple who run Home of Hope, Eleanor & Richard, their granddaughter who they care for & 2 foster children were home today as well. These kids range between the ages of like 2 and 6ish I think...and can be a handful to say the least. I guess they're pretty typical, but when you're already trying to care for 8 babies and the babies are your focus, sometimes the big kids can just be too much. On top of that, almost all of our babies have colds, and one of them is teething right now. So she cried nearly nonstop all day,which as you know, can be infectious it seems. Nobody was a happy camper today. Made for a long, long, long day. I seriously still hear babies crying somewhere. I don't know where it's coming from though! Obviously it's in my head. Today was a first for me to change the trachea tube on our little guy. My roomie Kathleen walked me through every step, I've watched her do it twice now. It wasn't too bad, just seems like a lot of steps to remember (although it's really not) and just a mental thing that you have this baby's oxygen source in your hands, literally. Kinda scary. Anyway, I'm glad I've done it but will be thankful to have Kathleen walk me through it a few more times. And hopefully we won't have to do it for much longer anyway. He's to go to the doctor on the 25th to see if he can breathe on this own!! For his sake and mine, let's pray he can!! I talked a bit more with Eleanor today about some of the babies. My favorite little baby's mother has HIV and has a drinking problem as well. So, if she took her anti-viral meds while pregnant (which would prevent HIV from transferring to the baby) they wouldn't have worked anyway since she was drinking. Apparently her mother just came out and gave her up because she knew she couldn't/wouldn't care for her. Eleanor thinks my little baby has HIV, because she's SOOO tiny. Not to mention the circumstances she came from. I'll send pics soon. I know I keep saying that, but I will.
One more day of work and then 3 days off! The weather looks rainy 2 of the 3 days. The one day it's not supposed to rain I will be Cape Point tour that AVIVA provides. Looking forward to it. One of the days I need to sit down and do some homework (boo) but this is the last week of my class, thank God. I've slacked a bit this week. When you don't get home until 6...well it just seems like the evening is totally gone. And when you get up at 5:15 your totally exhausted when you get some anyway. I'm sure people do it all the time but I don't get to see much daylight (dark when I go to work and nearly dark when I leave) and anyway it just makes me tired! My other day off I may go back to the township to buy some souvenirs from them :) Anyway, talk soon.
