Baby Madan! What a cutieWell I had quite the traumatic experience today. Poor Madan. He is 2 but is so small for his age and is the cutest little thing. But he has boils on his head that have apparently been the for some bit of time. There is one very large one and the infection has spread so he now has several smaller ones also :( Today he must have bumped his head and the large one opened up so we had to shave his little head and clean it. (By "we" I mean Frank does all the work and I assist :) So there I am squeezing Madan so tight I was sure I was going to pop him. I felt like an awful person as he cried and cried but he was kicking and squirming so much that I had to hold him like that so Frank could pop and irrigate the boils.(sorry for the gross stuff) Needless to say, Madan did not appreciate this at all. My poor little baby :( He screamed the whole time despite any cooing or humming or bouncing I did. I sat there wishing I could make him understand as I squeezed his legs in between mine, wrapped my arms around his little body, and held his hands down. I think it was more scary for him than it was painful, but either way it was sad. When it was all over though his head looked a million times better. (not counting the pathetic haircut he now has. I'm shocked that my disposable Bic razor didn't do a better job....not lol) So hopefully the antibiotics Frank put him on will take care of the rest.
The other kids just all have heat rash and lice for the most part. There are a couple sprains and some other aches and scratches and splinters, but the powder for itching and the lice shampoo are certainly the dominant treatments here for the kids. Adults come in too, but that's more Frank's territory. Oh and the kids LOVE the powder. I soon as I get it out it's like suddenly they are all itchy and need it.
In other news.......Yesterday was Shanti's 5th birthday!! She hasn't even been here for a year yet, and it was the first birthday she's ever actually celebrated. Lisa told me that she walked for two weeks with her grandmother to get here, and she was so small and dirty and her hair was orange from malnourishment. When I see her now I can't imagine this precious little child walking for that long in this place. It breaks my heart, but at the same time makes me so overwhelmingly happy that she is here now. She doesn't quite understand what a birthday is yet, but I think her face lit up brighter than the candles on her cake when it was brought out and everyone sang to her. Then she shut her eyes and made the longest wish, and you could tell she was wishing so hard. I almost cried it was so adorable. I'll have to see if I can steal a picture from Hannah because my camera was up on the 3rd floor.
So today was the second and final day (for now) that the kids had off school because of the strike. Yesterday I drew more Disney Princesses than I did in my entire childhood. The kids just wanted to color so I would draw which ever picture they picked from the books Cristina brought and hand them out one after another for hours. I must say I've gotten quite good at drawing Sleeping Beauty :) She is Anjali's favorite. Like this girl seriously LOVES Sleeping Beauty. I taught her the Once Upon a Dream song and she was so excited, and then later I let her listen to it on my Ipod and it was like Christmas or something haha. She is the sweetest most appreciative 11 year old I've ever met. She's really something special.
But it's not just her...they all love the princesses! And then I realized that they've never even seen half the movies..they just know who the princesses are, and they all have a favorite. Tonight we watched Aladdin and they all looked so confused at first when we said what movie we were watching. So then we were like...Jasmine. And they all went, "OOHH! Yay! We're watching Jasmine!!" It was very funny.
Something else that cracks me up is that apparently "Maggie" has become the Nepali word for "white person" in town. Cristina and I took a walk the other day because we woke up super early, and a little girl called after me, "Maggie!" so I thought she just mistook me for her since we look somewhat similar, and I waved back because I didn't want her to think Maggie was ignoring her. Turns out that everyone, even Frank gets called Maggie! We're all Maggies here! I really think that Maggie is going to officially make it into the Nepali dictionary (if that even exists) as the word for white person and will continue to be used for the rest of time.
And while we're on the subject, I've also been enjoying seeing how intrigued the kids are by my extreme whiteness. For the whole first day who ever was holding my hand would take my arm and look at it and point at my freckles and then turn my arm over and go "WOW...so white!" when they saw how ridiculously white and reflective the underside of my forearm is. It was sooooo funny. And it was more than one of them that did the same exact thing. However that has stopped since all my white has turned to red.
So it's back to school tomorrow, and I think I'll be teaching Health to Classes 1 and 2 which I'm super excited about. They're so cute but such a handful. My goal is to get them all sitting down in the first five minutes. Wish me luck. They're in for a fun day of learning about germs and hand washing......woohooo!!!
So yeah, I love this place. I love Maggie. I love the women and men who work so hard here. I love MANGOS!!! I love my mosquito net. I love the breeze we had after it rained today. I love that it rained today! I love that I got to help peel and cut potatoes and greens for dinner. I love that we had water today. I love that our power is on. I love satsung. I love Kopila!!!
Goodnight!
June 22, 2010 at 2:11 PM
I asked Grandmom to pray for rain, so I suppose she did and it worked! Aunt Nina