Tinahyestalin (Welcome) Helen!

Margitu, Helen and Callie. I'll have to post another pic of Helen once I take a few more. But as you can see, she's about the same size as the twins!
We took Emuti and Mariama to juice at the Rastafarian's bakery. They loved the place, but didn't really like the juice!
Mariama, myself and Emuti. Practicing our ugly faces and contemplating how kids can look so cute making this face whereas I just look scary.

Helen has made it to Kersa Ellala, and no, not Helen Kennard, but the new baby, ironically named Helen, which sent Helen Kennard into 7th Heaven to have the new baby share her name! A trip was made down to Arba Minch to secure paperwork signed by her mother that would release her into our care. Additional paperwork still has to be completed that would enable the baby to be adopted, therefore relinquishing all the mother's rights. It is amazing how trusting people can be here to give their children to complete strangers.

I thought the baby would appear to be white, but upon first seeing her, she is completely Caucasian! We are thinking the father may have been Asian because of her facial features. I wrote about her story a few blogs back, but just to refresh:

The mother was offered 200 birr to have sex with a foreigner, and when she gave birth the baby was white. The baby was thought to be an 'evil eye' and would have been killed had she stayed in Arba Minch. Helen is actually 10 months old, just a few weeks younger than Benjamin, but is close to twice his size. She is about the size of one of the twins and can crawl and has a huge appetite! What is interesting to me is that I thought that the staff and other children wouldn't take to the new baby so well because she is white. Quite the opposite has transpired though. Abuka has taken very fondly to the baby, and rarely lets anyone else hold her or feed her. Emuti and Mariama fight to play with her and all the men love to hold her.

This week has been busy meeting with the employees and revamping the VOH Operations Manual and HRCC programs. I never thought it would be so difficult to meet with the employees to get them to talk about what things work and what things don't. What we thought would be a good collaborative meeting where everyone put in their input turned out to be a tattle-telling session. The women here constantly complain about each other not doing their work properly, yet they sit around idly with each other and gossip behind each other's backs. Steff and I talked about how the women here probably gossip about us all the time, but in my opinion I don't care what they say about me- I only want them to focus on what they're doing right or wrong and change that.

Lon, Helen, Kidist and Callie left for the States on Wednesday. There were tears for about 30 seconds and then the kids ran inside to eat their lunch. It was a little anti-climatic. Callie sat in the car crying; she really easily attached to the children, especially the new baby, and apparently it was harder than she thought it would be to leave.

Steff's cousin Carolyn is here for a week. She lived in Kersa over a year ago teaching at the Adventist college, and she's back to work on some research for her Master's Degree. It was a strange experience picking her up at the airport because I got those airport jitters- like right before you're going to fly and you're so excited to go somewhere. In a way I suppose I'm excited to travel home in about a month, but I am already having attachment disorder, I love the kids here too much that I know that I'm not going to have even a semi-easy time leaving.

I met a man this week in the village that has an incredible story. He is a friend of Abu's and is a preacher for the local Adventist church. He used to preach out on the streets in a village south of where we are. The local men decided that he was too outspoken, in their opinion, and that they were tired of hearing him talk of God and His plan out in the open. One day they charged the man and beat him over the head with a metal pole and bound him. The man became unconscious and they threw him in a pit 18 m deep. He came to two days later and had no idea where he was. He had a huge gash in the back of his head, and it was a miracle he hadn't already died from bleeding to death. A man that knew that he had been thrown in the pit thought he was dead, but when he heard him moving around he threw him down a rope and told him to crawl out of the pit if he wanted to save his own life. Needless to say, he survived and now has a huge dent in the back of his head as living proof of his survival. The man is still preaching to this day- what a man of God!