February post 1

Well, thank you to all the people who are still reading this blog after it being going for five whole months now! I now officially have more time in Bolivia behind me than in front of me, which is a very scary thought. I'm hoping that you're all still thinking about me and praying for me, as I certainly still am doing for all of you!

For all of those who read last weekends blog, the week that Yani and Salustio went on holiday was not as insanely stressful as I thought it would be, but it certainly did have its challenges. We managed to keep the timetable pretty much going, and there were no enormous behaviour challenges, although some of the little ones did need pulling in line some of the time. Probably the biggest problem was that one of the older girls got Dengue Fever (there is a massive epidemic in the city at the moment) and so that meant a lot of trips to and from the clinic, and even one night slept outside under a mosquitoe night because her fever was way to high to be able to sleep inside. It was just unfortunate that there happened to be a major storm that night! In other health related emergencies, I had a slight scare when I found one of the little girls, who is booked in to have a hernia removed, crying on the toilet because she said a white liquid was coming out of her hernia. Not knowing what to do about a situation like this, and being alone in the home, I called Roger, who came and picked her up to take her to the clinic. It turned out that her hernia had not exploded (apparently they're not in the habit of doing that) but was just a run of the mill vaginal infection. This probably came about from a habit of masturbation with dirty hands, started hideously young because of a background in traumatic sexual abuse. Yours truely landed the lovely job of administring her treatment, which is certainly something that I never thought that I would do. I hope to be able to take more of them to the gynacologist some time this week to have a general check for infections, because some of them are just so used to having them they wouldn't think to point it out, and one girl has actually told me she thinks she has an infection.

The final week of the counselling teams teachings went really well, and they were also some chances for them to do some one on one counselling sessions with the girls. The session that they taught on the father heart of God, a teaching that encourages the girls to identify the ways in which their own fathers have failed them, and try to accept the concept of God as a perfect Father, was particularly interesting. A lot of the girls just got really angry, because they didn't even want to think about their dads - most of whom raped them, abused them, or just plain abandoned them, but at least one girl who confronted the hatred that she felt towards her father for abandoing her was able to find some kind of healing.

Traumatisingly, the day that Salustio and Yani were due to come back, one of the members of the counselling team had to change the gas canister which is used to give energy to the oven. Something went wrong with it though, which resulted in fire leaping across the kitchen wall. It is quite honestly a miracle that the entire kitchen didn't blow up, and the girls remained a little bit shaken afterwards. It did mean that we had to cook lunch outdoors on the fire that day, which was quite an adventure! That day the counselling team organised an afternoon of silly games, which was much fun for all!

Since they got back things have calmed down quite a lot, although I am still a bit tired from having so much extra work to do. The boys at El Camino sold us 20 chickens from the vast collection that they had been rearing, so there was a mass slaughter, plucking and general bowls of chicken insides lying around the place. Yuck! Thankfully I did miss most of the slaughter because i was at the dentist with the little ones, but it still smelt terrible when i got back.

Excitingly, the schools have officiallyl gone back, but disapointingly the mini bus chose this time to decide to break, so the day has been filled with lots of going backwards of forwards from the girls schools. Its been good to fall back into a familiar new routine, although it definately take a bit of effort to get back up that bit more early in the morning!

I spent this morning with Caitlin, Esther who is spending three weeks here, and Suzette, a Dutch girl who is starting two years with first contacts. We went out for a late breakfast, then went shopping, and then had ice cream. It is fun to have friends! On a sad note, Sandra moved all her stuff out of the home yesterday, as she'll be moving on to work full time with first contacts. I will still see her, but it does kind of feel like the first friend I made here is leaving me!

I think thats probably all the update that I want to give for now. THanks again for reading. Not sure when I'll upate again as my next free weekend I will be in PERU! So exciting! I am sending you all lots of love.