swimming cell phones

It's been awhile since I've written, but I'll try to talk about all the interesting things that I remember. :)
I just finished my second night shift, so I'm still getting back into the non-nocturnal side of life here at TLC. Our last night, Camilla and I had a different night shift leader (my roomie, Albertina) and it was definitely more fun than the nights prior to it. We ordered pizza and coke from the nearest place that provided a free delivery service and we had ice cream that one of the other girls bought for us during the day. When we needed mugs for coffee (among other odds and ends ;) ), Albertina and I climbed through the dish pit window since the kitchen door was locked. We were like spies...it was quite fun. :) Afterwards, Albertina and I set about cleaning the couches...for the first time in four years. If you can, try to imagine four year's worth of rotting milk, vomit, spit, random bits of various cookies, dirt and a few hairballs all mixed together and cemented into the cracks between all the couch cushions (which aren't removable). It was fun. :)
Also while on night shift, I tried teaching my cell phone how to swim. Strangely enough, it didn't work. It was an accident really. I was standing on the edge of the pool, fully clothed, watching the Lions go for an afternoon swim when Albertina (she's always the one getting me into trouble) convinced me to jump in. So I did. And it was so much fun. The Lions are hilarious in the pool. Some of them get so excited about jumping off the edge that they often forget to make sure someone is there to catch them...but, no tragedies. :) After about a half hour or so, I began to wonder why Katie hadn't texted me back...and that was why. So, I'm sorry if I haven't been responding to your texts or phone calls; I have a good reason. :)
After night shift, we get a day off (usually to sleep), so Camilla, Albertina, Mairi (who also had a day off) and I arranged for Gareth, one of the TLC drivers, to take us to Bruma, which is a huge African market...centre...thing...The market was lovely. It reminded me of markets in Mexico, where everybody is your friend, everyone has something special to show you and everything they're selling can be found two shops down...:P I did buy a lot of presents though. I can't go to a market and not buy presents. :) So, Becca, Alli and Adam, I already have surprises for you when I get home. ;)
We've had no new babies recently. We did find out today though that one of the Nest babies and one of the main house kids (she's three) are brother and sister, which was a huge surprise. I have no idea how the social workers manage to make these connections since 90% of the babies are abandoned without so much as a name. We also found out today (at our weekly meeting) that 1...2...3......9 of the babies will have homes within the next few months. They said that this is the biggest group of babies they've ever had leave in such a short time. Obviously, it's a huge blessing. It also means that we'll get several new babies and the groups will all change since the most developed Nesties will go to Fledgies, Fledgies to Grubs, etc...I'm excited to see all the changes. And to meet all the adopting families. :)
Anyway, that's it for now. I hope all is well at home. I think about you every day. :) Much love.

Karli

Parcel from home!

Hello:

Hi everyone, guess what! I received my first parcel from home today!! It more than made my day, obviously. :) I got...my favourite movie (Chocolat), a new journal, a few bags of my favourite tea and notes from mom and Adam. Adam's was on the back of his newest hockey picture and all the girls here agree that he's very handsome and tough-looking...but don't tell him they said that. ;)

Everything is routine here. The days don't really stand out from each other as much as they used to. Except the other day when I was on 'wishy-washy' for three hours in a row...I got a lot of cleaning done that day. :) We are at max capacity as far as volunteers go, and the office has scrambled to make up a few jobs to keep us all busy. We have four hour breaks every day, expected to increase to five hours this week. I'm off for the rest of the day since I start night shift tonight...another night shift...crazy.

The robberies have settled down as far as we've noticed. We had a locksmith come in and put new locks and deadbolts on all of our cottage doors, every cottage got an air horn, they've finally started putting barbed wire around the top of the wall and the head peoples' phone numbers are now posted in every room in our cottages...so they've upped the security...but just a bit...;P

Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, nothing really exciting has happened here lately. No new babies, no new adoptions. Although, one of the Lions is finally on her way out. A lady came yesterday to meet her and fell in love with her, so the lady will be back to visit until they get used to each other and Khensani can go home. :) So that's an answer to prayer. :)

I'm supposed to be doing laundry and going to sleep right now, so I should go. Much love. I hope all is well back home. :) xo

Karli

Don't panic

Nobody panic:
Hey everyone, I sort of get the feeling that my last blog post sort of left a few people wondering what the heck I am still doing here....To put all your fears at ease, I have some news. You know that gun that was apparently jammed? Well, as it turns out, it wasn't a gun at all, it was a long whip, used for keeping the dogs from attacking the robbers. The night guard saw the men again later and realized that he had been mistaken, it was a whip. So no worries. :)
Our internet has been more than a little dodgy and sporadic lately so emails might be a bit few and far between...
Hm, what to tell? I go to go to church for the first time since I've been here! It was an evening service and a local guy (who often volunteers at TLC) offered to take us with him. It was so wonderful; a lot like our praise and worship nights at home, mostly young adults. Afterward, we went out to a restaurant called Spur and had a bite to eat with some of the people from the church. Laura (a friend from Germany) and I have asked to have the last hour of every Sunday off, so hopefully it will become a regular thing. :)
I've been out a lot lately, which is a little strange. Besides church, I was at Southgate Mall the other day, just to buy groceries and mail a parcel (which didn't happen). And last night 9 of us went out for Mairi's 19th birthday to Moyo's (I was there the first week I was here as well) for supper and drinks. I had line fish (don't know what it actually was) with a sauce sort of like squishy pea sauce. :P It was quite good. :) We made it home just after 11 and I was asleep about 33 seconds after my head hit the pillow.
No new babies or adoptions recently. Right now there is some sort of stomach bug going through the nursery, only the Lions and Creepies though. Unfortunately, we can't really pin it down because the Lions ate acorns (poisonous apparently) and both Creepies and Lions were accidentally given milk that was bad. Of course, it might just be a typical stomach bug. I feel a little nauseous today though and I'm hoping I can skip over the sickness...
Anyway, that's all the exciting news for now. Did I mention last time that I finally got a letter? From Becca L. :) It made my day. :) Anyway, toodle-oo. Much love.

Karli

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!:
I'm finding it hard to believe that today is the beginning of my second month here. Thinking about when Becca was gone to Thailand for 40 days, it seemed like she was gone forever...but when you're the one gone, the time absolutely flies. I try not to think about leaving though, because I know I will miss these kids. They tell you when you arrive to try not to get attached...riiight...
I feel sort of like a student here, having to learn how to buy and manage my own groceries. I buy all the things that we would have in our own house at home (but in smaller quantities obviously). I still can't manage to finish what I think I can though. For example, I've been working on this one loaf of bread now for at least ten days and have gotten to the point where I just rip the moldy chunks off before I make a sandwich. The moldy chunks are getting bigger though and I'm trying frantically to finish the bread before I actually have to throw whole pieces away...
Our New Years Eve party last night was splendid. :) We bought loads of food, made a huge bonfire and all sat around and talked for ages. It was so lovely. A few of the girls and I spent most of the evening talking about Buddhism, Christianity, demons, parallel universes and being able to tell the future...really light stuff...It was cool though, because there were so many different ideas tossed around and no hard feelings about any of it. :P I came up with the brilliant idea of going around the circle and all saying something that we were proud of in the past year, i.e. our accomplishments, or major events that had occurred. It definitely made me realize what amazing and diverse people I am with right now. :) At 12, we went into the nursery and had our champagne there so we could celebrate with the night shift people as well; we all screamed 'Happy New Year!!!!' and didn't even wake up the babies. :) We hung around with the Main House kids for a bit since they were having their own party, complete with a hot tub...which was...a wine cask/barrel (?...just big enough for one person) propped up over a fire pit. Awesome. :) I managed to call a few people and wish them happy new year, but apparently everyone calls somewhere at the stroke of midnight, so all the networks were busy and I couldn't get through to very many people...I was asleep by one though, didn't feel like staying up all night...however...
This is the part that I will get a few emails about (from home at least). Remember when I wrote that we had two nights in a row where guys had jumped the fence (great fence...) and stolen things? Well, that was a couple weeks ago and it was quiet until two nights ago when they came back and stole some more lawn mowers. Everyone's response to this was "Oh, ok." Rather than the "Omyword, we're all going to die!" that it was last time. So everyone was fairly relaxed about the whole thing. Last night though, around four o'clock, my roomie woke up to men shouting right outside our cottage. She got up and saw men running around and let the night guard into our cottage (who had knocked on our door). I woke up when she came back into our room in a panic and started frantically searching for her phone. When I was awake enough to realize something was wrong, I got up and wandered over to the front door, where Albertina (my roomie) and the night guard were trying to get ahold of Pippa and Thea. After a few wrong numbers and cuss words they managed to wake up Pippa. The night guard just said, "Pippa, can you bring Mama (Thea) and drive down to the preschool right now. Thanks." And that was it. As it turns out, the two guys from the first robberies brought their friends. There were 6 men hiding outside our cottages last night and one was carrying a gun. The night guard was chasing five when he heard the one with the gun hiding in the bushes trying to reload his gun. Thankfully, it was jammed and I think that's the guy that the night guard managed to hit with an iron bar that he threw. The iron bar is the only weapon on this property. How these guys manage to get by the 7 or so trained guard dogs (German Shepherds, Mastiffs, etc...), I'm not sure....A little while later, Pippa and Thea drove up in the truck and picked up the night guard, who told us to lock our door as he left, and started driving around the perimeter. Holy brave women. I would have stayed in my room. Unfortunately, the ring of keys hanging by the door are all for something different then that particular lock. So, we pulled the couch in front of the door so they would at least make some noise if they tried getting in. Then we went around and latched all the windows, then peeked out our own window for a little while before decided to go back to bed. In the end, nothing scary actually happened, but it was enough to keep us all on our toes...
That's about it for news around here these days. I'm looking forward to my next day off on Sunday. :) Hopefully it will be a relaxing one, although, we are down from 13 to 9 hour days, so I don't know how much more relaxed I can get...Anyway, much love. I wish you all the best in the New Year. I know that this is one that I will certainly never forget. :)

Christmas day

Blog Post 4: Well, there goes Christmas 2009. The kids had tons of presents donated and loved them all, especially the wrapping paper. :) Tammy and Pippa worked like whirlwinds all day. Breakfast and lunch were huge; waffles, granolas, yogurt, as much fruit as you wanted, eggs, bacon, etc...then turkey, salmon, ham, potatoes, peas and corn etc, etc...And SO many desserts...wow. I love Christmas. :)
I took a bunch of awesome pictures as well and will try to get them posted as soon as possible. :)
A guy showed up today from Winnipeg. He works on bikes or something and travels to Africa a lot to work in orphanages and such. He's been to the same one as Jocelyn and Ian and knew who both of them were (they never met though). Funny that we met halfway around the world...
I spent my evening break laying on a trampoline under the sun with a little girl named Teresa and a baby named Ruth. Teresa and I had staring contests and no-laughing contests for a good hour. We never lasted long and for some reason it was so much fun. There was something lovely about it that made my Christmas perfect. :)
I'm sort of distracted by the conversations behind me, so I should go. I hope that everyone's Christmas was wonderful. :) Love you all, talk to you soon. :)

Karli

Christmas

Blog Post 3:
It will be Christmas morning tomorrow. I'll be waking up the same time I normally do on Christmas day, but it will be my alarm clock, not my little brother who gets me out of bed. I don't care what anyone says though, they're not going to convince me that it's Christmas. Thirty-four degrees Celsius is not Christmas...
We had a small Christmas party tonight. All the volunteers had a secret santa and we all made a dish that we would normally eat at home. It was all really good. I scrambled around trying to get the ingredients for cranberry cake because apparently they sell cranberries here, but I had to change my idea at the last minute because if they did sell cranberries, I couldn't find them. I made fruit cocktail cake instead...still good. :) My secret santa present was from Dan; a bottle of Chardonnay and a chocolate bar. Apparently he knows what women like. :P There were a few protests though; "Who gave alcohol to the minor??"
I've moved up in the world since night shift. I'm now allowed to do Fledgies and Lions. Fledgies are so incredibly boring. All that happens with them is that they each get fed every four hours and changed nappies in between. They aren't small enough to be as cute as the Nesties and they aren't big enough to have as much personality as the Grubs. They're just boring. The Lions are a ton of fun though. This may sound terrible, but I think all my years working with dogs has given me just the right authoritative voice for the Lions. It's amazing what kinds of trouble they can get into in the course of three seconds or less. Today, we took them to the Memorial Garden to see the tortoises (torti?) and since the sprinkler was on, we were all soaking wet in a matter of minutes. It was so much fun though. :)
We went out to some of the squatter camps today, delivering presents. Apparently these people in the camps are people who have never had a country. They're not even refugees; they don't belong anywhere. They were so overjoyed to get the presents though, to the point of desperation, pushing and shoving each other and occasionally ripping things out of each other's hands in their efforts to get more things for themselves or their kids. It was kind of...I don't know what word you would use to describe it....humbling, depressing, uplifting....and then some others. We got to spend part of the afternoon touring the outer fringe of Joburg in the bed of a truck as well, with our hair whipping in the wind. :) It was a lot of fun. :)
Some of us girls went to Southgate Mall the other day, which is considered the 'black' mall. Strangely (or not so strangely), this country is still mainly segregated...and the races don't mix very well at all. Anyway, we were literally the only 4 white people in the entire mall. It was kind of funny. Nice mall though. I had some amazing fish and chips at a restaurant there, which is saying something, because I don't normally like restaurant fish. :)
Otherwise, life goes on as usual. The water pump's been gloriously consistent lately. The internet works most days. I got a cell phone finally. :) I'm starting to make some very close friends. :) Tomorrow we get a huge breakfast and lunch with everyone. :) I'm so excited. I'm wondering if we'll actually get to sit down...that would be strange...
Anyway, it's a long day tomorrow and unfortunately, the clock doesn't stop ticking for those of us silly enough to stay up past nine. Good night! Merry Christmas and God bless to all! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas day. :) Much love,

Karli

Night shift

I can't believe it's almost Christmas time. We have some tacky decorations up in the nursery and one of the girls made paper chains to hang around her cottage...:) It was +34 here yesterday though, and hotter today so...Christmas does NOT seem to be just around the corner. We do have a Christmas party coming up, with Secret Santa and everything (not that Secret Santas ever turn out to be Secret) and everyone is looking forward to it.
I'm on night shift this week. It's night...5 of 7. Night shift people get all the really mysterious jobs like putting out clothes for the kids for the next day (I always wondered how those got there...) and doing all the laundry. We also clean the entire place from top to bottom. We (me and two other girls) do 4 hourly feeds for 9 of the babies, which ends up being about 27 feeds a night, which wouldn't be so bad, except that we have two more babies who are sick and are fed rehydrate every hour, which brings the number up to about 50 feeds a night.
It's now night 6 of 7, but I couldn't post this yesterday because the internet went out halfway through the email. :) Gotta love internet around here. Last night went well. One of the baby's conditions is absolutely baffling right now. She wouldn't stop crying last night and we couldn't figure out why until I undressed her because I thought she was too hot. Only then did we realize that she had a nasty reaction to the bandage in her armpit for her TB cyst that has come open. Taking stock of her various ailments; she has HIV, TB (with an open cyst under her arm), an eye infection (lots of the kids have it), frequent vomitting due to her anti-rates (HIV drugs) and now a reaction to the bandage. Really, can anything else go wrong? The poor thing is only 8 months old...I've already found a couple that I want to adopt though, so hopefully mom and dad will get on that once I get home. :)
Last night was definitely a laundry night. We had piles and piles and two of the three washing machines kept taking turns breaking down...it was a long night in that respect.
Once I'm off of night shift, I would love to move on to the Lions group (2-3 years). I have spent a bit of time with them every morning for the last little while and I absolutely love them. They can talk, a little, and are so energetic and...vibrant I guess you could say. :) Except for one of them, their favourite word is, of course, no. The other one's favourite word is yes. We're still not sure what's wrong with him...
If you ever get a chance, drive to the Glen Mall here in Joburg. :P The drive itself is stunning. The beautiful stone houses are all built directly into the hills. The winding road leads past gated cobblestone driveways with huge tropical plants covering the front yards and draping over the walls. Every house has a swimming pool and, I'm sure, a Ferrari or something similar parked in the garage. So forget the mall, go house-shopping instead. :)
Anyway, that's all for now, time to get ready for work. :) Have a wonderful week. Much love,

Karli