Read June's Update | Read April's Update
May 2009 Update by Sonjelle
Hello again,May 28th marked the 2 year anniversary of HardtHaven Children's Home! For me it has been wonderful to witness how much HardtHaven has grown and changed, especially in the last year. Although working here has been sometimes challenging it has also been incredibly rewarding. Looking at all the children that we have taken on over the last year in our sponsorship program, the new programs that HardtHaven has started, such as the palliative care for older women, and seeing just how much more organized about our paperwork and financials gives me great hope that HardtHaven will grow even bigger and stronger, thus being able to help more people in the community in the next year. We have worked on updating the website and posting a 2 year update for our anniversary, so if you haven't already, take some time to check out our website for new information and pictures of our kids.
Things at the home have gone well this past month. The children ended their school break and have returned to school; annoyingly the teachers have still not graded most of their exam results so I am not able to report them to you here. Paulina started school this month; she is attending the same pre-kindergarten that Gabriel and Emma attend, Donum Dei, the only Montesouri School in Kpando. This leaves only Bright and Donkor as the last two children who need to start school, for them we will have to wait for the new school year that starts in September.
The health of the children has been good this month, with not a single case of Malaria! Ernestina was taken to MMCH for pneumonia and responded very well to the medication (also to the fact that I would buy her fan choco and she would sit with me in my room in the evening time and eat it). Small wisdom has not been sick this whole month, which is a great improvement over the last couple of months, I think the benefits of good nutrition are starting to show, he is actively trying to stand on his own and we have purchased a wooden walking aid for him so his legs are getting much stronger. Big Wisdom came back from High School twice to go to the hospital, once for his eye and once because of headaches, otherwise he is doing well.
Cynthia, one of our sponsored girls (Christopher's older cousin) stayed at the home over break with us, she wanted to stay at HardtHaven and attend school in Kpando, but sadly we are running out of room and have no extra beds in the girl's room, so she had to return to her village.
John Nana, one of our sponsored children comes by regularly with his Aunty Mary, John is almost 3 and he is learning to talk quite well. He is no longer afraid of me which is nice and likes to play ball with me, calling out 'Tassi qua nam ball!' (Aunt, give me the ball!) While Nana is still quite small for his age due to the severe malnutrition he faced as a baby he is developing much better than we initially thought.
We have taken on more sponsored children this month. The first being a newborn baby girl that one of the nurses from MMCH is looking after, we are providing her with formula and other baby necessities, the idea is that when we become better staffed we will take on the care of the baby at HardtHaven, but at the moment we do not have the staff necessary to. We have also started sponsoring 2 more families; a Mother, A. and her 2 year old baby W. and a woman named P. and her 14 year old daughter, E. and 8 year old son E.
We had a bit of a dispute with the water company this past month as our meter has been broken for some time, so they were just randomly charging us a fee (and quite a large one at that), I kept on explaining to the people that the fee was not fair, if they had averaged out our last 12 months and charged us that average I would happily pay that, but I was not going to pay such a gross overcharging. Edem finally was able to sort it out at the head office, and it turns out that for the last year they had us on a corporate account (this explains why last year our water bills jumped to twice the amount they were before), Edem tried explaining to the water office that we are not a business, and in fact it is part of the water offices corporate responsibility to help us as we are trying to help the community, not to overcharge us as they had been doing for the last year.
I would like to thank Meghan M, Sasha and Patrice, former volunteers who sent us some packages. Meghan sent two containers of protein powder and Sasha sent 4 for which the children were really happy, they love their 'special drink', I have to admit I tried some of it and I do not know why they love it so much, but if it helps they get strong, who I am to judge. We have enough protein drink now to start sharing it to our sponsored kids aw well. We have so far given some to F., G. and a new toddler who we have started sponsoring. Patrice sent two boxes of toys and Macaroni and Cheese, which we made to celebrate the two year anniversary.
We had 4 volunteers arrive this month, Fay and Heidki both from the US who stayed for two weeks. They donated lots of toys and some really cool bubble blowing gadgets which the kids enjoyed very much until they broke them all, and of course candy land which is the children's all time favorite ('The gingerbread man game!!!!'), you can tell it is the children's favorite because they have gone through 6 different sets of the game in the last 6 months. Fay wrote up two proposals for future income generating and community service, and Heidki did tmaths tutoring with some of the children. Brad, an EMT arrived and was due to stay for 2 months, but sadly he had to return home early. He we have used some of the money that he donated to order a whole set of drums for the children, which I know they will really love (our neighbors on the other hand might not be so pleased about that). We are going to try and see if we can get the drum teacher from the Secondary School to come by and teach the children as he did last summer. Sara, from the US arrived at the end of the month and is working at Konda primary doing intensive tutoring with children from class 2, she stays at the home, so after school she does tutoring work with the children here.
The new batch of Rice university students have arrived. They came with a ton of donations; protein powder, educational computer games, educational books, diapers and a huge amount of office organizational material (I never thought I would be so happy to see manila files!). As the Rice U. people come through MMCH, they do their volunteer work there and some of them have been coming by the home after work to help tutor the children in math.
We were very fortunate to have the American chiropractors who are volunteering in Accra come to do adjustments on the children, Dr. Jay and Dr. Christine. The doctors explained to us that since all body systems are connected, getting the children's nervous system working better could lead to an improvement in their immune system. The children were all fascinated by the table and the work the doctors were doing, even some of the neighborhood children came by to worked on all well. The doctors also worked on Tassi and Edem (after all the children and I song the shame song at him because he wouldn't try it). Dr. Christine who is volunteering long term in Ghana has said that she plans to return to continue working on the children. Edem and I will also try to bring some of the children (such as Christopher because of his bowed legs) to Accra so she can work on them regularly. I will say I was very impressed as they did work on Baby Wisdom; who for the week previous would not take any solid food, I told the chiropractors this and they did their thing, the next day he was eating again! In fact now every time Nancy sees Wisdom during meal times she runs away because a few days ago he ate ALL of her dinner as well as some of Israel's! We are really appreciative that Jay and Christine found the time to come all the way to Kpando to help, and are looking forward to seeing them again in the future.
We have had some new applications for the second matron position and are currently interviewing the applicants; this means in small time we will have two matrons again. I am sure Tassi will be very happy (she will now be Head Matron) as she can take the 2 months vacation that she has been accumulating after she trains our new matron.
Well that about wraps up the month of May here. On a personal note, this will be my second to last update as I return stateside in July to continue my schooling, but I don't even want to think about leaving just yet.
Sonjelle
Read June's Update | Read April's Update