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”).