Hey everyone! Once again, I find myself apologizing for my lack of updates. This time I have a pretty good reason-a complete lack of time! We're suddenly extremely short on volunteers, which means that we're all working a whole lot of hours. Thirteen hours a day, in fact. We get a whole bunch of new volunteers in about a week, though, so we'll be back to our regular hours pretty soon. In the meantime, I'm sorry if you don't hear much from me. I go to the nursery at 6 am, and leave at 7:30 pm or so, and I just don't make it to the computer at any point before or after that.
To be honest, I'm really, really glad that Christmas is over. Although it was fun, it was one of the longest, most stressful days I've had since I've been here. Not only was I pretty darned homesick, it was also really busy. Of course, in some ways, Christmas in the nursery was jus a normal day. The babies still needed to eat, be bathed, and have their nappies changed. The atmosphere, however, was anything but normal. It's like the babies knew that it was a special day. At about 10 am, all of the volunteers, babies, and toddlers all piled into the main nursery to open presents. I have never seen more presents in my life. There was a mountain of presents. It took a couple of hours for the presents to be unwrapped…and then, of course, we had to sort through the gifts to find the nursery again! Luckily, no babies were lost in the chaos! A couple of the volunteers took over kitchen duty as the normal house staff was on holiday, and they spent a lot of time cooking three wonderful meals for us. Typically we all grab our food in the kitchen and work through all of our meals, but they held dinner till we were all able to sit down together and eat, and it was really very nice. That said, I'll reiterate that I'm glad the holidays are over.
We got a new baby last week. She's from a different children's home, and she might be returning to that home after the holidays. One very strange thing about South Africa is that pretty much everything closes over the holidays. Strangely enough, even a lot of the children's homes close, so we often end up with some babies from the other homes. Sihle is a six month old baby girl, and she came to us rather ill. She is HIV positive, and has just started antiretroviral treatment. She's not in good shape right now, but we're trying hard to help her get healthy. This precious little girl looks at the world with eyes that hold a wisdom I've never seen in such a tiny little person. Her life has been a struggle, and it shows. We're trying hard to make that struggle easier for her, but we've still seen no hint of a smile.
I missed all of you, my wonderful family and friends, particularly over the holidays. Know that you're in my thoughts and prayers. Love and miss you all,
Amanda
