Little ones...

Many of the babies and toddler are sick this week.  There seems to be a flu bug of some sort perhaps.  Several of the kids today had fevers, and just didn’t feel like playing.  As I helped the preschool kids work on letter formation, my hand over theirs, their skin felt hot and their faces looked worn.  I pray that the bug doesn’t hit any of them too hard.  I know that it took it’s toll on me, and I am an otherwise healthy adult…

Some of the kids also have a fungus on their scalps.  Sometimes it appears in thick white blotches under their hair, and other times they come to school or the play balcony with salve on their little heads.  A few of them looked as if they had pus pockets on their scalps that were leaking.  In a place like this, sickness and disease just spread.  Everyone is in such close contact, the running water isn’t guaranteed to be clean, and there is no Walgreens.  It struck me today that I have no idea where you would even go to get medicine.  The shelves at GLA are stocked with Tylenol and other things that the children need, but the ones in the village I doubt are as fortunate. 

Yesterday a little boy named Christophe, that I had never seen before, came to the balcony with a new volunteer.  His hair was orange, a sign of malnutrition.  I believe that he is fairly new to GLA.  As he pushed his little wheeled cart around the play area, he teetered on unsteady legs.  The volunteer assigned to him unfolded his paper and began to read about him – milestones he should be working toward, and areas where he is developmentally behind his peers.  As she looked over his information, she suddenly looked up.  “Today is his birthday,” she said.  We all looked at him, walking behind his faded Little Tykes shopping cart, and wearing the worn out clothes he was dressed in by the nannies.  Today should have been a day with presents, smiling parents, a special song, cake, perhaps 100 pictures!  It was his second birthday, and he spent it with 4 American women he didn’t know.  No fanfare – just smiles and hugs from strangers who care.