Last birthday party for the year!!!

The birthday girl!

Well this was the last birthday party for the year. This little girl turned 5 last week - as you can see on the picture she loves butterflies.


A word of thanks to all our supporters!

Lambano sanctuary would like to say thank you to all our supporters for giving so freely to the children, Lambano wouldn’t be the same without your support. But mostly, thank you for loving our children and giving up time in your busy schedules to come and play with them.


As you all know its Christmas time – a time for holidays and rest. Our next update will be on the 16th of January 2009!

Have a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year!

Answered prayer!!!

Soaking off his cast!!

We’ve been praying that this little boy with a club foot, goes to a loving family that will be able to care for his special needs. His cast has now come off but has to wear a special boots for the next 3 years. We are happy to say that he went to a loving family in Pretoria. This family has already taken 2 of our children so we definitely know that he will be loved and well looked after.


Outings!

Bird park with teacher Winsome and Auntie Keisha

Bird park – Some of the children went to a Bird Park on Tuesday - what fun they had! Thank you very much to Teacher Winsome who organized and took these children on this special outing.

Zoo – On Thursday, Mama Barbara took the McAlpine children out to the Pretoria Zoo! The children loved it and asked lots of questions!

AWANA concert!!!

The concert!

Ice cream time!

Every Friday night the older children attend a youth group, called AWANA, at the local church. Last Friday was the last meeting of the year and the children performed in a concert. It was great to see the children singing and dancing to the songs, quoting scripture and also explaining what the scripture meant. After the concert the children were treated to an ice cream - that was the highlight of the day!

Thank you to all the AWANA teachers for taking the time to teach our children about God.

Our children got their report cards today and all 9 of them did exceedingly well. All have been promoted to the next standard.

Parties, parties!!!

It’s that time of the year when our children get really busy with parties. Yesterday the children were blessed with Christmas gifts. Thanks to Auto Trader – the Operation team, for collecting all those beautiful gifts for the children.

Goodbye!

This little girl is leaving today. She is going to another facility where she will be with her siblings

Hard work pays off!!!!

Congratulations to our school children!

8 Of our children received certificates for all the hard work they put in this year! Thanks to teacher Winsome who diligently helps them with their home work! Granny Peggy, Auntie Keisha and Mama Barbara were there when the children received their rewards.

Feedback!

He loves to sleep!!!!

On our last blog we mentioned that this little boy has a club foot, and would need surgery. Thankfully, this week he went into hospital for his operation to release the tendons in his ankle. The operation went well and he is back home with a cast that reaches from the foot to the groin. In order for his foot to become normal he will have to wear special boots for the next 3 years…

In January, the new school year, these 5 children are starting the 1st grade. They are really excited

Party:

This little boy turned 4 last week Friday! He was very excited about his cake and kept on coming to the office to make sure it was still there.

Parties!!!

His birthday cake was decorated with the tools that he likes!

This boy turned 6 last week….. He loves to build and fix things that are ‘broken’ in the house.

One of the volunteers organized a party for the 2 children who had birthdays in October. As you can see the girl was a fairy and the boy was Spiderman. They loved their outfits!

Back home !!!

This little girl came out of hospital on Monday after spending around 9 days there. She is doing well so she was able to start attending our pre-school on Thursday!

She is struggling to adjust to the routine of being in pre-school so please pray that she learns to share and be more cooperative with the teacher and other children.

Our birthday girl!

Our little girl turned 6 last week. Thanks to all the supporters who send her gifts!

The Lord is good!!!

The 34 Senator Rd children went to Durban with Granny Peggy! It was their first time to go to the ocean. All the children had such fun and were so excited to see the sea for the first time. The majority of the children were adventurous while a few where a little apprehensive after seeing the big waves and large volume of water. The children also had the opportunity to go the Ushaka sea world and they were able to see a dolphin show and the aquarium. Thanks to auntie Lolly’s and her family for sponsoring the trip.

Mama Lyn and Keisha had to rush one of the children to hospital last Friday, (there seems to be a thing with Friday and rushing to hospital). This little girl is 8 years old and one of our oxygen dependant children who is on nasal prong oxygen permanently. She developed a pneumonia and her oxygen saturation dropped dramatically to 70%. She is currently still in Bara on IV drugs but we are hoping she can come home soon.

Update:

The little girl and boy who were tested a few weeks ago, are HIV negative Praise the Lord. The little girl has siblings so she cannot go out for adoption, she will be placed in another facility shortly.

The little boy has a club foot which is currently being treated by our Orthopaedic surgeon. He needs to have a new plaster of paris put on his leg every week for the next six weeks and then he will have surgery on this leg to release the tendons and then he will be in a special boot for three years. This is a very long procedure for such a tiny little boy.

New Intakes:

This morning we received a 2 week old baby who is very wasted and is from a HIV positive mother who died giving birth to her. Her main issue is malnutrition as her siblings have been trying to feed her a mixture of porridge and water. She will be assessed and tested for HIV as soon as possible.

Yesterday we received a 12 year old who has a very low CD4 count. She has had blood tests and will have a chest X-ray to see if she has TB as well. She will be worked up urgently to place her on Anti-retroviral medication as soon as possible.

School concert:

Last night some of our children were performing in the school concert. Mama Barbara took the children who were not performing in the concert to see their brothers and sisters perform. They all enjoyed the concert!

Sad news!

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthen me” (Philippians 2:13). Whenever we have visitors they often asked us, “how do we cope with the deaths of the children?” Most of the time my reply is simply “God helps us!” But now, I know for sure it is God who helps us with this job. I can honestly say that for Lyn, whenever a child is near to death she sits with them and sing and pray with them until they die. This whole weekend Lyn was working and stayed with the little girl until she died. I know for sure that it is God who helps her through this hard time as she is the one who has to tell the families of the children that they children might die soon or is dead. What a calling!!!

Yesterday we lost our coma baby, even though we knew that she was going to die it is still hard.

Wychwood children going to the sea

It is now school holiday and the children from the Wychwood house went down to Durban for the holidays. Granny Peggy drove for 5 hours with the children, and they arrived safely at their destination. We will post pictures when they return.

Parties!!!

The children blowing candles with the birthday man!

Thank you to Autotrader who shared a wonderful party with the children on Tuesday! The children had a wonderful time spraying each other with water guns, making jewelry and singing “happy birthday” to one of the senior members of the company.

The little girl with her mother

On the last post we wrote that this little girl was going to hospital to have her abdominal feeding tube inserted and after that she would go home to be with her mother.
Before we sent her to hospital we re-did her Brain scan and unfortunately the brain damage is severe. Currently she is oxygen dependant and the doctors are not too optimistic about her outcome. However we will continue to lovingly care for her and ensure she is pain free.

Birthday parties!

We had 2 parties on Friday, one was for uncle Philly (our driver/handyman) who turned “6” that’s what the children said - it was his 60th birthday so we felt he deserved a cake. The children sang happy birthday to him.


This little girl turned 6 last week. Granny Peggy is very special to her!

New Baby

Another cute little girl, she is 2 months old and due for her blood tests to see if she is HIV positive.

An operation!!!

This is how he sits; he can’t even cross his legs.

This little boy is five years old, he has been with us from 2 years of age. We noticed early on that he had bow legs and that he sits like he does above. We took him to an Orthopaedic surgeon and he advised us to wait two years as most of these cases correct themselves. However with this child his legs have not corrected and his hips have now rotated externally and so he finds it difficult to sit normally. The surgeon and ourselves have decided that he should undergo an operation called an Osteotomy which will correct this problem. We have decided that it should be done this year still as next year he will start grade 0 and as he is already behind we did not want him to miss school.

Award

Lyn accepted an award from Rotary International on behalf of Lambano. The award names Lyn as a Paul Harris Fellow “in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world”.

Birthday Party!!

This little boy turned 8; he is the oldest in the McAlpine home. Thanks to Auntie Barbara’s friends who donated money for this bike - he was really happy to get a big bike!

Our baby is back!!!

The baby that was rushed to hospital just over a week ago is back with us and she is doing much better, although she is still on full time oxygen. The sad part is that, although she is positive, her CD4 count is really good and she didn’t need to go on the ARV’s drugs yet but, because of the PCP, we have to put her on drugs immediately.

Party!

This little boy turned 2 on Friday. Even though he is 2 he can’t walk or crawl properly yet – he uses a kind of leopard crawl to get around. We did some tests on him and found that he probably received some brain damage because of lack of oxygen when he was born. He goes for neuro-physiotherapy once a week which he loves and we have seen a big improvement since he started.

Our new baby!

We have a new little baby - he weighed about 1.6 kg when he came to us at about 5 weeks because he was a premature baby. He is so tiny that we struggled to find clothes to fit him. His mother gave him away because she couldn’t look after him. He is HIV negative and foster parents have already been found for him so, once he has gained enough weight, he will be going to stay with them.

Our coma child was admitted to hospital today as she kept on running high temperatures and seemed to be uncomfortable. Since she is booked for the surgery to put in her abdominal feeding tube in a week’s time, we felt she needed more intensive care. The doctors now have to decide whether she is well enough to have the abdominal feeding tube put in so that she can go home to live with her mother, or to send her to a hospice for palliative care.

A rush to the hospital!!!

Usually on Friday afternoons people get excited because it’s the beginning of the weekend and they get to go home and relax. That’s not what happened here on Friday - Lyn was about to go home, when one of the ladies came to her and told her that one of the children was breathing very fast. Lyn took her Sats (to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood – should be 100%) and they had plummeted to 50, which is very serious. She called our doctor and put the little girl on double oxygen which brought her sats up to 84 but this is still too low and the baby was still in distress. They called the ambulance and rushed across town in peak hour traffic. The doctor diagnosed her with PCP – which is a complicated form of pneumonia that HIV positive children get. This disease can be life threatening so we are grateful that we caught her disease early. The doctor is happy with her progress.

Showing off some of her gifts

It became a singing competition on Friday between the boys and girls - needless to say the boys did a good job. They sang and sang. The occasion was the birthday party for one of the children who turned 8 – she was really happy to get her gifts. Thanks to all those people who gave her gifts.

The children were invited to a birthday party on Saturday; the party was at Mama Melanie’s farm. The children love going to the Farm as they get to run around the whole day – they had a ball!

Saying goodbye is really hard!!! We had to say goodbye to one of the ladies who’s been with Lambano since the beginning. Irene has been our strongest medical caregiver so her skill as well as her reliability will be greatly missed. Irene has been accepted at a nursing college where she will study for four years to become a nursing sister. We know that she is going to be a fantastic nurse because she’s got compassion for the sick. We are thrilled that Irene has this opportunity to develop but the children and the staff will miss her tremendously

Birthday girl !

One of the children had a birthday on Friday, she turned 4. She was really happy to receive her birthday gifts.

The children have a learning centre. Thanks to all those people who’ve given us computers but mostly we thank the young adults from Cornerstone Church for giving up their weekends to come and paint the classroom. They also bought a carpet and cushions for the “reading nook”.

The children doing their homework

All this computers were a donation, thank you to all the sponsors!

A video of the ladies singing traditional song of celebration!!

Feedback!!!

This 8 year old girl went home to live with her Aunt. She is doing well and her Aunt was really excited to take her. We are hoping that she will go back to school. She likes to pose when you take pictures of her as you can see in this picture! Perhaps she will become a model one day….

Here is a picture of the 8 year old girl standing next to one of our children who is also 8 years..

As for this 8 year old who looks like a 4 year old, we said in our last posts that we would take her to the lung specialist - this we did and found that her lungs are severely damaged and we can’t do anything about it. All we can do is keep her lungs as clear as we can by doing physiotherapy on her 3 times a day and managing any infections she gets. She will be on oxygen indefinitely.

This 9 year old has been with us for around a year – we tried to send her home in February but she needed to come back as she became ill again. She also saw the lung specialist last week and her prognosis is good. He expects her lungs to heal with time. She will be going home once we can teach her mother how to dispense her medication and do her physio.

Our three year old also saw the lung specialist and her news is also positive. The specialist expects her to be off her oxygen within another 4 months. We are really pleased about this because her lungs were damaged due to her mother’s reneging four times on her TB medication.

This little girl came last week. Although she is HIV negative, she got TB meningitis and, due to that, she is brain damaged and in a coma. She needs to be fed by naso-gastric tube at present so she is staying with us for a month until she can have an abdominal feeding tube inserted. One thing in her favour is that she has a loving mom who wants to care for her so, once the abdominal feeding tube is in place, she will be able to go home.

Our little 2 month old little girl is HIV positive. We were so sad to hear that as she looked so well and we had high hopes for her. Since we are full, she will be going into foster care or to another facility.

For some good news!

Last week we got the school reports and most of our children have done well. Most of the scores were threes and fours (3 being “satisfactory achievement” and 4 being “excellent”).

New children!!!

This has been a busy time for mama Lyn - It seems as if we get new children every other day! I already lost count of how many children have come and gone in the last few months.

Our latest admission is a little 8 year old girl who is the size of a 4 year old. She's on permanent oxygen because of chronic lung disease and has been sick since 2004. We've placed her on ARV's and we will take her to a lung specialist to see what we can do for her. She also loves her food.

We have another little girl who arrived a week ago who is also 8 years old. She is such a sweet little girl. She is from one od the township that we work in. The school principal was the one who saw that she was sick and called the social worker who sent her to us. We will start her on her drugs and when she gets better she will go back to her family.

Look at the difference between the 2 girls they are both 8 years old...

Another cute little girl, she is 2 months old and due for her blood tests to see if she is HIV positive. She was found abandoned in a field the day after she was born.