This week has been a week of colds and fever!

Many of our children were sick this week, including quite a few of the mammas. However even sickness didn’t cause them to stay away from school because they were performing in the school concert.

The school concert was really good and the children enjoyed every moment of it. The theme was “Countries of the World”, inspired by the Soccer World Cup. Each grade did a sequence based on a different country, really foot stamping music and dancing. (Sorry we can’t show you pictures of the children in the concert, but we were not allowed to take pictures)

The hospice children singing!

This little boy has been with us since November last year (see our January post). On Wednesday he turned 13 he was so happy to be able to blow out his candles and have people singing to him.

Mama Lyn's 50th birthday!!!

On Monday we had a party for mama Lyn’s. All the children made birthday cards and came up to the office to sing for her, they even counted up to 50, what a long count

Some of the hospice children giving mama Lyn a gift

Lambano children singing for mama Lyn!

And this girl had a party the next day. She turned 8!

Eli Lilly's CSI workday!

In South Africa companies are encouraged to do a corporate Social Investment (CSI). And as you know South Africa has many homes that need help and it’s really hard for companies to choose which home they would like to do their CSI workday. And that is why we are so grateful for companies like Eli Lilly who chose us.

Eli Lilly's Team

Planting grass

Not much happened this week.

What a long day!! On Monday 3 of us spent the whole day at the hospital with three of our children who had their tonsils removed. All are healing well.

We had a chicken pox outbreak at the hospice and the hospice children have been under quarantine for 21 days and couldn't go to any of the parties/activities or mix with the children from the other homes. Thank the Lord that the quarantine is over and they can now leave the hospice, play with the other children and go to all the parties.

Shopping adventure!!!

Mama Barbara took the two toddlers shopping and as you can see in these photos that boys will be boys! He fell asleep while shopping and obviously as girls we love our shopping.

I’m bored of shopping, can’t we go home

I love shopping

Time to say goodbye!!!

Stephanie from Switzerland

Marie from Germany

For the last 3 months we had 2 volunteers staying with us. Stephanie is from Switzerland and Marie is from Germany. These ladies have been a blessing to us and the children. We’ve been really busy over the last couple of months and they have been a huge help by driving the children to the different schools and therapies and helping with home work and packing our store rooms - this was probably one of the worst jobs for them but they didn’t complain once.

They will be greatly missed!

Winter is nearly over!!!

2 of the toddlers that started swimming!

Winter is nearly over and the children have started their swimming lessons. The 2 toddlers went for the lessons for the first time and they are enjoying every moment of it.

Another school holiday - unscheduled

The school children have been home for a week now because the Teachers’ Unions are all on strike. Whilst most of the teachers at the Wychwood School aren’t striking, there are fears of what the strikers might do to the children if they try to go to school as some of the children who tried to go to school were threatened. We hope that by next week the strike will be over.

Hospice arrival

In the last two weeks we have admitted two nine year olds, both are very sick. One has meningitis and has had to go to hospital to receive specialised IV antibiotics. The course is at least 6 weeks long and the drugs have bad side affects so we had to take a chance and send him to hospital despite the Nurses Unions also being on strike. We could not take him to our usual hospital as the strike there is quite violent, but we got him into another hospital. Hopefully, once he is stable on the medication we will be able to bring him home and continue his treatment here.