News: Today takes nine months! They're popping up the first four teeth!
Making friends: Friendships widen and Mr. Greg is always new knowledge
... A few days ago we started teaching Italian a child who attends the school next to us that the Italian father (but not one has ever seen, therefore, know little of their language and culture), and mule, but all is called "Mzungu" (white) as we are called us.
the evening, after classes ended, comes close to our house and while Gregory passes from hand to hand all the students that if they fight me and Kathy try to exchange a few words in Italian. The
like, say, know a little of its origins and feel a bit 'with the whites ... This must be difficult for her to fit in, it's not big and great for us adults have become accustomed ... to imagine a child of ten years living in a college ...
Also new will come ... soon the regulars (or semi-fixed) in our house! We are preparing for their new ... a new room in the garden .. eh we are already gearing up for the chickens! We have built a wooden house that is being completed, the food has already been bought ... just missing them! We look forward to seeing Mr. Greg how it will behave with her new "friends" ...
New experiences: This week we had a "day out" with the hospital staff to go for vaccination in the villages. Two days a week, two nurses and midwives are in remote villages where there are hospital and health centers to carry out vaccinations in children and pregnant women, there is a policy attentive to this point of view. All vaccinations are done free of charge and are quite complete until the year of the life of every child ... is also widely publicized the importance of this intervention. We
partisan hospital and we walked along dirt roads (a little 'we were missing from Tanzania ...) surrounded by a bright green, lush vegetation contrasting with the red of the earth ... when we find ourselves in situations like this all the questions that Sometimes we say like "What are we doing here?" vanish and all the enthusiasm for this experience comes out and you reload of positive energy.
After an hour of shaking the whole way (during which Mr.Greg fell asleep ... as was used in belly) we arrived in a raduretta near a crumbling brick building ... soon we realized that it was a school from which children running out to bring the benches on which the nurses would support the equipment. Then they returned to their lessons in a room of an unfinished house with bricks, dirt floor, several holes in the walls, two or three benches and a blackboard. We have placed under a tree a short distance and gradually began to get mothers with small children, most coming from the fields where they had to cultivate land. In general, families are advised by a person who is in contact with the hospital (mobilizer) and agree on dates (usually once a month for the village), this gentleman is in the area and goes on to warn all concerned that the this day come the nurses to do the vaccinations, and so mothers can make an appointment to find.
First, while I was expecting the arrival of all, the midwife has chatted with the mothers present their concerns and special requests. Once you get a good number of people have begun to weigh the children hung on the scale attached to the tree branch. After that every mother with her medical folder, which distributes the hospital for every child, it was the nurse to write the weight, draw the child's growth chart and mark the date of the next visit, then you put all in a row the other nurse for vaccination. There were newborn babies, three months, nine and one year (these are the stages of vaccinations). While Matte resumed with the camera, photos, and was helped to weigh the children and I know Greg did with the other mothers and children communicate mostly with gestures and looking at each other ... it was nice to be a mother among mothers, sometimes with a baby is accepted in his arms better, you feel closer, not that far from reality, despite their skin color but obviously is always a surprise to see a child is white (and Greg it is a lot).
After about three hours had been vaccinated and visited 43 children, in a few minutes the area near the tree had been deserted, we collected the equipment inside a small cardboard box, put the benches in the school and got into the car ... everything is back as before we arrived, the tree, the silence in Italy ... think of how much stuff we need to vaccinate a child or pay him a visit ....
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