A (Late) Christmas Gift

First, I would be remiss if I didn't take a chance to wish a happy birthday to my Grandma. An avid reader of this site, she is one sweet gal and doesn't look a day over 93. That's good, because she's nowhere close in age to being 93. Fun Fact #1: Grandma shares a birthday with baseball great Honus Wagner and famous actor Abe Vigoda. Fun Fact #2: Of the three of them, only one is still alive. (Abe Vigoda is still totally dead, right?)

Moving on, I'd like to take another chance to thank those of you that help to contribute to my/our ministry here. Its thanks to you guys that I get to fun stuff like Christmas presents for the kids. This year, instead of getting soccer balls for the boys and mirrors for the girls, I decided to give the gift of reading. No, I'm not one of those horrible parents that buys a dictionary for his kid and then forces him to read it, but close.

The last two years the kids have been asking for new Bibles and told they'd eventually get them. Seeing that day not coming any closer, I took it upon myself to go out and make it a Christmas present for every kid that A) didn't have a Bible and B) knows how to read. I kind of expected them to be disappointed finding out it was their Christmas gift, asking instead to replenish the soccer ball supply or a new package of hair extensions, but you know what?

THEY TOTALLY LOVED IT!

 

Belson and Victor with their new Bibles.

Francisco and Riquito trying not to look awkward together.

Atija and Ofeita like the fact that these are hard-covered.

Estela and Ronilda asked to make sure they are in Portuguese. Yes, they are.

Dionisio and Celso prefer them to what was their previous Bible, a shared, pocket-sized, Gideons, New-Testament-only Bible that fell apart, leaving him with Matthew, Mark, and part of Luke.

And Ganito is just happy that he finally learned to read last year. Samito celebrates with him.

These dozen kids just received their first Bible, courtesy of all you out there helping to support me. From myself, and them, a BIG thanks.

Just like the rains down in Africa

Thanks for those of you that have been praying for Mama Maria. She left the cholera ward on Monday night and is staying with her daughter trying to rest and get her strength back. Part of the reason why she  got sick (and everybody else gets sick this time of the year) is because of the rains. They were the most consistent during January, but as soon as we hit February they turned destructive.

Two weeks ago a storm came through on Sunday and destroyed hundreds of homes and washed out countless roads. One more came through on Thursday and Saturday that week much to the same effect. Mud houses just can't stand up to the weight of rain that is falling. Ground gives way at the absolute quantity of water falling.

Here's some pictures I took after the Saturday storm.

This is the corner where about half the orphanage drains out. The drain partially collapsed and impeded much of the water from leaving. This is Mama Maria's house. But don't worry. This all happened while she was visiting her brother in another city.

The water backed up and was touching the steps at Victor's house at one point. And keep in mind these pictures are about an hour after it stopped raining.

Of course, for the boys, it turns into fun and games climbing on chairns to traverse our... um... pool, or lake, or pond? Whatever you call it, Belson and Muaparato were traversing it.

You have to traverse it. It's very dangerous to walk through puddles or wade in the water because you can get m'tawi-tawi. Its just a horrible fungus all over your foot that is really painful. Never gotten it, but usually somebody will pick some up during the rainy season.

The rain also makes our road nearly impassable. There reason is up at the power station at the top of the hill, this nice little pond all collects and drains down our street.

This is the view up the street. At the lake, I figured out it was running at about 1.5 liters/second. Keep in minnd that this water in our street you see here is not standing water, it's running down our road. Here there is probably more from the water that has been collecting as it runs down the hill.

The view looking down from our gate shows more water running. Any spot where a hole has opened up people fill with branches and leaves to warn people that its a giant hole and not a little puddle. Those are the leaves you see in the middle of the road. Where the road bends downhill in the picture is about as far as you can pass.

The rain rushing down our road creates problems with holes and ditches and erosion. There are about 5 spots that I counted where the road has eroded away and exposed water pipes connecting our bairro. This is as far as I dared pass with the camera because more and more  water collected the further down the hill you went. About 50 yards/meters past the orphanage the road becomes impassable as it has eroded into a ditch/gulley/canyon about 5 feet (1.5m) deep and about 4 feet (1.2m) deep. And from what I could guess had collected all the water and was flowing at about 8 liters (2gallons) per second. That is A LOT OF WATER.

Jose standing with our neighbor Celso. Jose, as you well know, has major developmental problems and problems hearing and speaking. Celso, our neighbor, has a surprisingly common birth defect here and was born without ear canals, so is very limited in communication. Imagine cupping your hands around your ears. All the time. They both need to rely on a lot of non-verbal social skills to interact and because of that play really well with eachother. In the bottom corner is the drain from the orphanage. Given the water above it should be full of rushing water, but since it collapsed inside the water is trickling out.

Urgent Prayer for Mama Maria

Mama Maria, our lovable and ornery cook/live-in-grandmother is in the hospital with cholera. She had diarrhea and vomiting set it over the weekend and went to the hospital this (Monday) morning.

Cholera is a scary disease and requires aggressive treatment. The hospital here has a wing specifically for diarrhea and cholera cases, but just because there is space does not mean there is effective care. It can be very deadly, and we are hoping that she did not get it here at the orphanage but rather got it while visiting her brother in Murrupula. Still, we are on a high level of alert here and taking every preventative measure we can to ensure nobody gets sick.

Please keep her in your prayers, as she is in ours.

Coke and a smile

It seems that some people really like doing nice things for others. Take these kids for example.

Back in December, we had our essay contest. Except that the kid's didn't know it was a contest, they thought it was homework. The topic was write about the change you want to see happen. And while some kids wrote about having better teachers, ending government corruption, protecting the environment, and one memorable one advocating a swimming pool be built at the orphanage, there were three that stood out because they expressed a change on a personal level.

As an unannounced reward for their essays, they each got a case of pop. I got it for them right after New Years, but then the very same day is when Felex and Carlitos wanted to do their special meal and bought the pops off me. Since then, I've been waiting till the neighborhood coke dealer got a new shipment in and bought the pops for them. Well, that was last week, and when I came up to them to say I had their pops and would keep them in my fridge, they had another idea in mind: They wanted to give them away.

They said the pops were nice, and after we gave them out there would still be some left over, but they could never imagine what they'd do with a case (of 24 pops) each. So, Sunday night (chicken night done right!) the wanted to give out pops to the rest of the orphanage.

So, that's just what they did. Virginia (above) Manuel, and Mauricio gave out the pops and explained how they earned them and why they were giving them away.

I

Manuel struggled a little to get used to the bottle opener.

 

 

...but eventually overcame his fear and got the hang of it.

 

 

Mauricio meanwhile popped those tops like an old pro.

Here are the happy recipients of the gits. Everybody really enjoyed the pops. And, I've noticed, for some strange reason, the boys overwhelming prefer coke.

 

While the girls enjoy fanta.

 

And Daniel just enjoys chilling back.

Our Family

[Note: This is kind of a long post. In fact, it's a really long post. About four times longer than what I normally put up here. The reason is I worked a really long time on this one and believe it should be read as a continuous narrative, not broken up into little parts. With that in mind, I ask that you read it that way. If you don't have time now, come back to it later. Print it out to read it some evening. It might take you a little while to get through, but without understanding this, the rest of the stories here are just cheeky anecdotes and amusing tales. So please, read and enjoy, and maybe even pass it off to a friend when you're finished.]

 

You don't know what it's like.

Lets just start with that as the premise. You can't sympathize, you can't relate, you can't know how it feels. You simply don't know. You come from a life and a culture that is so foreign to the challenges and difficulties and the struggles that are part of the fabric of life here. But in understanding what goes on here there is no way to separate the individual threads from the whole tapestry. What I will be writing today I've already tried in the last several weeks to explain to the closest of family, to the best of friends, all the way to the strangest of strangers. The only way I have found to adequately explain it is by laying down the premise that you simply won't understand.

You don't know what it's like.

That is the admonition I have for you today. I want to warn you that this is not something that is intellectually out of reach as if I were explaining rocket science to you. It's not something like modern art that you either appreciate or think is unintelligible. It is as if I were asking you to hear colors, or draw with sounds. You have no adequate frame of reference for even understanding what that would mean. You're picturing yourself drawing with sounds right now, but I assure that you're doing it wrong.

Because you can't even begin to know what it's like.

The reason for this is that I'm going to tell you what our kids did for Christmas. Rest assured, it's nothing shocking. We weren't doing animal sacrifices or getting matching tattoos or something salacious. But at the same time, it should be absolutely puzzling and alarming: We sent the kids to be with their families. For the end of December and Christmas the kids got to spend two weeks with their mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins.

Did you hear that? I sure did. That was the sound of you brain saying, “What!?! I thought you ran an orphanage, not a boarding school or summer camp. What do you mean send then them to their families? Their parents?” Let me try to calm you down some.

In Which Someone's Retinas Burn

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything in any way. It's just a real conversation I had with a real person today. I still can't believe it's a conversation I actually had, but, I have lots of conversations that looking back there is no logical reason for them to ever take place. My friend is not a kid in the orphanage, in case you were wondering.

TJ: Hello there, friend.

Friend: Hey, TJ.

TJ: How's it going?

Friend: Bad.

TJ: Why bad?

Friend: My eyes hurt a lot and they won't stop.

TJ: When did this start?

Friend: About a week ago. I was looking at the sun with my cousin to see which was bigger, the sun or the moon. It started about the same time.

TJ: How long were you looking at the sun?

Friend: About seven or eight minutes. Now when I look at things there is just nothing. I can only see stuff around the sides.

TJ: Realizing at this point, despite being fluent, I had never learned how to say, “Sorry, I think you've seared a hole in your cornea.”

TJ: Tough luck, hope it clears up soon.

Friend: Thanks, bye.

Dang, thems some pretty kids

Jordao and Cocas relaxing during the heat of the day. If it doesn't rain, it's usually around 95 degrees and all activity comes to a halt. On days when it rains it really comfortable before and after the rains.

Marinho and I spent a good ten minutes messing with Vovo while he slept during the afternoon. When he woke up, he was not a very good sport about it