Sabato Njema

Since I have been going to the (let me get this straight), Njiro Kanisa la Waadventista wa Sabato (Njiro Seventh-day Adventist church), I have learnt that "Happy Sabbath" is a universal concept, despite the different languages we might speak. However, here in Tanzania the correct reply to "Happy Sabbath" is "Happy Day." More often you will hear the Swahili version, "Sabato Njema," to which the other person replies, "Njema Sana" (very happy).

You know how at church someone up the front will say "Happy Sabbath" and the congregation will reply quietly; then the person at the front will say "HAPPY SABBATH!"again and will keep going until the congregation responds in an appropriately enthusiastic way? Well, that too as it turns out, is universal.

My first time at the Njiro SDA church was a few weeks ago now. I took a field trip there on a weekday to work out where it was and how to get there. Njiro is the district that I live in and the church is a 20 minute walk and then a 10 minute dala dala ride away. Most of the time I take the dala dala on the way there and then walk the whole way back.

I didn't know what time the church started, so I turned up at 9, only to find that the English service was coming to a close and I was just in time for Sabbath school. I went to an English-speaking class and then was told to go back to the church for the rest of the service. What I didn't realise was that this was the Swahili service! There was almost no room in the church and so I had to sit in the very front pew. No escaping or leaving early when you're sitting in the front! The good part was that I sat next to a nice young man who kindly translated the whole of the service into English for me, although to be honest I still only understand about one word in three.

Since then I have gotten smarter and been there early so I would be in time for the whole of the English service and then left straight after Sabbath school. It's lovely to be back at church after not having been for a while. I hadn't realised how much I had missed it. The music is amazing and I love the thing about Adventists being like a global family - I really do feel welcome there. The first week there I cried because the music was so beautiful and the hymns so familiar and I felt so much at home.

The one thing that I both love and hate is how very Adventist it all is. I could have been in a church anywhere in the world. It made me instantly feel at home and at peace, yet there was none of the African culture left in the service and I found that sad. The African Sunday churches that I have been to here have been very different... so much singing and dancing and clapping and the people's love for God is so very obvious. The Adventist missionaries who came here did a great thing sharing God's love with the people, and yet I wish that they had let the people keep some of their own culture and traditions.

Never mind though - I love the church here very much and look forward to going there each Sabbath. Last week I stopped across the road to take a picture of the church (it looks small, but there must be several hundred people there during the Swahili services) and I couldn't get the "Church in the Wildwood" lyrics out of my head. You know the one that goes, "There's a church in the valley in the wildwood, no lovelier spot in the dale; no place is so dear to my childhood, than the little brown church in the vale." Sure this is no wildwood, and it is not the church of my childhood, but in some ways it feels like it. God is great and I know He's with me all the time, but being with fellow Adventists makes me feel so much more connected to my home and to my purpose for being here.

Here in Tanzania it's Friday night. In New Zealand it's early Saturday morning and within a few hours the Sabbath will roll around to the American side of the globe. Sabato Njema my lovely friends!

xoxo,

-Hannah

Angel Baby

Almost everybody who comes to Neema House ends up having a favourite baby. I find it interesting that hardly anyone ever chooses the same favourite. It must be that you just relate with different babies in different ways. I love all the babies and will happily kiss and cuddle and play with any of them, but there are some that you just connect with more than others.

Angel is one of those babies for me.

Angel is Angelous' (aka "The Naughtiest Baby in Africa") twin sister and she is the complete opposite of him. Angelous is a mischevious troublemaker, whereas Angel is smiley and sweet. She is a good eater and almost always sleeps when she is meant to be sleeping. She is a little sweetheart who laughs all the time and if you go into the room to visit her she will come running, a big smile on her face. Never has there been a baby more aptly named than Angel.

Angelous and Angel.

Angel is lovely, but she is also the SLOWEST drinker of all time. Everyone else will have been in bed for ages by the time she finishes!

Angel all dressed up for church.

Angel fast asleep at nap time. The next photo I took was of Angelous - laughing and jumping up and down in his cot.

Angel eating far more than her fair share of cake on her first birthday last week.

Angel is the sweetest, loveliest baby that I know and I love her so much. Because she's not naughty or mischievous though there aren't any stories to tell about her! She really is the Angel Baby. :)

xoxo,

-Hannah

The Naughtiest Baby in Africa

At Neema House we have all sorts of babies with all different personalities. We have quiet babies who don't cry much and we have babies that cry all the time. We have good babies, who eat up their food and go to sleep when they're meant to and we have picky babies who only like to eat certain foods or who are up at all hours of the night. We have sweet babies, calm babies, fussy babies and mischievous babies.

And then we have Angelous.

Angelous is 12 months old exactly and he is adorable. He is one of my favourite babies. He is spoiled rotten and sweet and he loves cuddles and he kisses you by putting his open mouth on you and saying, "MWAH!" loudly at the same time. He will kiss you anywhere - feet, knees, shoulders. One of our other babies, Anna, is not a fan of being touched by the other babies, but for some reason Angelous loves her. He has been known to rush up to her, knock her down onto her stomach and then kiss her loudly and repeatedly on the bottom.

Angelous was recently moved into the toddler room and it's clear that he misses his friends. When he comes back to the big baby room for a visit he runs around kissing everyone and he and the other babies bump foreheads in greeting, laughing the whole time. When we go for a walk and he sees his little friend, Baraka, they smile and laugh and hold their hands out to each other.

However, despite his general sweetness, Angelous is the naughtiest baby I have ever come across. Most of the other babies go about their own business, play with each other and generally do not make a nuisance of themselves. Angelous on the other hand, cannot help but interfere with everything. The other day I was sitting on the mat dressing Deborah after her bath, when Angelous rushed in to the room. Instead of following his nannies request that he go to his bath with her, he ran over to Deborah and promptly sat down on her face, laughing cheekily the whole time at our horrified exclamations.

Angelous takes his first steps at nine-and-a-half months old

He also recently developed a vendetta against poor Beulah, who cannot crawl and therefore cannot get away from him. He will run over and hit her repeatedly on the head with a rattle or small toy. Someone is always shouting, "Acha!" (Stop!) or "Usi piga!" (Don't hit!) when he's around. "Usi piga Susie!" "Usi piga Hannah!" "Usi piga dada yako!" (Don't hit your sister!). The list goes on. Today I lay down on the floor in the toddler room (always a risky move) and before I knew what was happening, Angelous had run over and hit me violently on the head with a tiger (you can put your hand inside it like a puppet, but it is very hard and frighteningly lifelike). When I sat up to get away from him he pulled my hair until none of it was left in its plait anymore.

Angelous about to hit his sweet sister, Angel.

Yesterday, he didn't want to sleep at nap time (not an altogether uncommon occurrence) and instead went into the kitchen where the nannies were serving themselves their lunch. He pranced round the kitchen, a wedge of orange in his hand, touching all the nannies on their legs as he went past. He went over to the hot stove and put his hand out, waited for the nannies to shout "ACHA!" and then threw his head back and laughed. Then he went to the cupboard, opened the door and threw his orange inside, laughing the whole time when someone had to come and fish it out for him. Then he would dance around the kitchen again and return to the stove, waiting for the inevitable, "Acha!" to come.

Everyone else is asleep, but Angelous is up eating mandazi with the adults at chai time!

A common Angelous face - usually provoked by someone putting him down when he wanted to be carried around. This is usually followed by him throwing himself backwards on the floor, arching his back and having a full-blown tantrum. Who needs the terrible twos when you have a baby like this?!

When he is naughty the nannies say, "Corner!" and put him in time out facing the wall. Unfortunately he usually just tips his head back and laughs at you. Otherwise he will find a speck on the wall or the floor to look at and will sit there giggling at it, as if it's the funniest thing he's ever seen. Then most of the time he will jump up and go right back to hitting Beulah or knocking Ibrahim down or stealing a pacifier off Angel.

Angelous also (rudely, might I add) likes to put his head up ladies skirts. It started off with him hiding under the end of Susan's kitenge (a type of cloth used for skirts, dresses, etc) and she would say, "Angelous iko wapi?" or "Where is Angelous?"Then it progressed to him going up to other people and putting his head right up their skirt, much to everyone's amusement and the occasional stranger's embarrassment.

Over the past couple of months the bigger babies have been starting to eat finger food. Angelous loves this, but strangely prefers not to pick the food up in his fingers. Instead, he puts it on the floor (doesn't matter whether you're inside or outside or the floor is clean or dirty), gets down on his hands and knees and then slurps the food up off the floor with his mouth like some sort of small animal. It's very amusing to watch!

Today it was Angelous' first birthday. He shared the birthday celebrations with his twin sister, Angel and another little boy, Baraka. I made cake this afternoon and while all the other babies were happily playing in their rooms, Angelous was prancing around the kitchen, licking chocolate icing off the beaters and screaming blue murder when anyone tried to take them off him.

Between the three of them they must have eaten half a cake themselves!

Angelous is an outrageous baby - he kisses the other babies and flirts with the nannies. We always say that Angel is going to have a terrible time keeping him out of trouble when he is older! He is spoiled by everyone and is ridiculously sweet and absolutely lovable, but he is without a doubt, the naughtiest baby in Africa!

xoxo,
-Hannah

Hello. Goodbye.

Recently there have been a lot of comings and goings at Neema. When I arrived at Neema House we had 27 children. However, the previous co-director at Neema fostered one of them, Jack, and she took him with her when she left just after I got here. That made 26 babies and the number has stayed between 25 and 29 babies since I’ve been here. At the current premises we can take up to 30. Since I’ve been here five babies have left and six have arrived.

The first new baby was Gloria, who came with her mother Mary, to live at Neema House for a few months. Gloria was very premature and weighed only 4lbs at birth. Her mother is young and had nowhere to go after the baby was born. She has an aunt who she can go live with, but Gloria is too small to travel to the village yet. At the moment Mary and Gloria sleep in the big baby room and Mary helps out with the babies in her spare time. The other day Mary was helping us get the babies ready for bed and no one was quite sure what to do with Gloria – as soon as they set her down on the floor, Deborah (14 months old) would rush over and try and sit on her. We solved the problem by putting the still-tiny Gloria in a washing basket and putting her on the table so the other babies couldn’t harm her.

Gloria when she came to Neema House.

Gloria now.

Next five-month-old Gian arrived. His mother is 17 and still in school. She wants to finish her education so Gian has come to live with us for two years until she has finished her schooling. Gian was quite unhappy when he first arrived at Neema because he missed his mother. He got used to the nannies in the small baby room and was starting to show us his adorable dimpled smile, when he had to be moved to the big baby room to make room for new babies. He tends to cry a lot now!

After that two-week-old Ebenezer arrived. Being premature and only 4lb 10oz, his name is far bigger than he is! Ebenezer does a lot of sleeping and eating – he takes about 1-2oz of milk every two hours and he doesn’t cry much at all. Ebenezer’s mother died after a C-section at the local hospital and his father has other children to look after so he has signed Ebenezer over to Neema House until he has remarried and can take him back.

That same week 6-day-old Debora arrived. She was abandoned at the hostel where her mother had been staying and is only 5lb 6oz. She’s very sweet, but she cries a lot and has her days and nights mixed up. She sleeps all day and then stays up and cries all night, much to the delight of the nannies!

A week ago today we got baby Daniel. At 7lb 10oz he’s the biggest newborn we’ve had in a while! He was abandoned on the doorstep of a local lady’s house one evening She kept him over night and then took him to the police station in the morning. Her and her husband wanted to keep the baby, but they have to go through the proper channels to actually adopt him. Daniel (who she named) has come to stay with us in the meantime. We’re not sure when exactly he was born, but he still had his umbilical cord stump, so it must have been in the previous couple of days. When he arrived he had a bath and got a clean set of clothes and then I gave him his first bottle at Neema. The 2oz was gone in a flash – perhaps he’s going to be the next Bahati!

Daniel's first day at Neema House.

I love all the new babies, but I love Daniel most. At only about 9 days old he still has that sleepy, newborn look - like he's not quite sure why everything's so bright and noisy. I wish Daniel's mother could be here to love him, but because she can't be, I'll love him for her. I wish a family for you Daniel and for all the other abandoned babies. You deserve all the love you can get.

Our last new baby is little Sarah, who was also abandoned at the local hospital. She will probably be put up for adoption, as we don't know who her parents are. I didn't realise quite how tiny she was until I took her clothes off to give her a bath the other day!

Neema House stretches at the seams with new babies and our hearts expand at the same rate. I used to wonder how you could cope with so many children – so many hugs and kisses to receive, but also so much more worry if they are sick or unhappy. How can you love them all? I have found that love is endless. No matter how many babies you love, you can always love more.

Unfortunately in an orphanage, babies not only arrive, but they leave. In most cases this is good, as they are going back to family who love them and they will be brought up in their own culture. Neema House takes in a lot of babies temporarily after their mother's have died in childbirth. These children will go back to their father or extended family eventually. I hope in some corner of their minds the babies remember that we loved them in their first months or years of life - that they were safe and happy and cared for with us. However, there comes a time to give them back to the family they belong to.

The first babies to leave were Silvamus and Davis, Neema’s identical twins. They left Neema house on their 2^nd birthday, August 1. After their mother died they spent the first part of their life at Cradle of Love orphanage in nearby Usa River and then when Neema officially opened on June 1, 2012 they came here to live with us. Their father is a Tanzanite dealer (a precious stone found only in the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro) and was unable to take the boys back until he had remarried and had a wife to care for them. In the past few weeks he married and came to Neema to pick his boys up.

Silvamus and Davis were very sweet boys and very hard to tell apart from each other. Silvamus had a little dot on his left ear and Davis had a tiny white scar on his forehead. I was constantly checking ears to see which one was which! Silvamus was more outgoing and Davis was more of a cuddler.

Soon after that, another of our toddlers, Gilbert, also went home. His father is a street beggar in Arusha (he was unfortunately crippled after having polio as a child). Gilbert used to live with his mother, but when she became mentally unstable several months ago, he was brought to Neema House. At about 11 months old when he came, he had a hard time adjusting as he missed his mother a lot. Now he’s about 19 months old and his father arranged for him to go and live with his mother (Gilbert’s grandmother) in a village about 6 hours away. Gilbert was very upset to leave and we could hear him wailing as the car drove off down the street.

This past Sunday, Helena, left to go home to live with her aunt and grandmother. Helena was two-and-a-half and she was everybody’s favourite girl – partly because she was the only toddler girl and partly because she was just generally sweet and charming. She would run into the big baby room, kiss everyone, including the babies, and then run out again. After Silvamus and Davis left, there was a month where Helena and Joel were the only big kids. Often when I arrived at Neema they would both be sitting outside on the potty eating chapatti. Helena was a little mother and she always wanted us to tie a doll or teddy on her back. Other times you’d find her holding the hand of one of the smaller babies, helping them toddle down the hallway. She was ready to go home though and while everybody will miss her, it wasn’t hard to let her go. She will grow up out in the village with her grandmother and aunt to love her and look after her and she will be happy.

Yesterday though, little Joel (we pronounce it Jo-ell-ee) left and that was hard. Joel was brought to Neema last year as he was an at-risk baby. He was extremely malnourished and he had burns on one of his feet. He’s two-and-a-half now (although he could be older because his age is estimated), but he’s still tiny, weighing at least 4kg less than Helena who is supposedly the same age. Joel was the smartest child I’ve ever met and he knew every Neema employee and every Neema baby’s name. The first thing I would hear when I came in the door each morning was Joel’s voice shouting to me from the toddler room, “Annah! Annah!”

Happy days at Neema with "Cole" and Joel.

On Sunday Joel’s grandmother came and stated that she wanted to take him back. Unfortunately no one protested, despite the fact that this was the home he had been taken out of and that he is still very malnourished. He is also emotional, has strong bonds with the nannies, babies and volunteers, and is terrified of his grandmother (on the rare occasion that she came to visit, he would cry and refuse to even look at her). I’ve been told that at other orphanages the families are not allowed to just come and take the babies away. They have to come and spend time with them and when the child is happy with them and trusts them, then and only then, are they allowed to take them. Hopefully Neema House will develop a system like this in the near future as I worry for the state of mind of children who are suddenly snatched out of the life they have grown up in and deposited back with people they don’t know or trust. 

Joel went home on Tuesday. His Bibi (grandmother) came to pick him up and he cried the whole time the nannies were getting him cleaned up and changing his clothes. He kept talking about Helena and I can only assume that he knew that Helena had gone away and not come back, and that he was worried the same thing was happening to him. I asked to go with him when they left, thinking that perhaps it would help calm him down if there was someone that he was comfortable with there. It did somewhat and he perked up on the car ride, looking out the window and pointing at the dala dalas and piki pikis as they passed by.

I thought that it was a bad situation that he was going home to, but it turned out to be far worse than any of us had imagined. A tiny house, no other relatives to help Bibi with him, no power or clean water, a cow in the front yard and a river of effluent flowing through the tiny yard that Joel is expected to play in. I know this is not unusual for Africa, but this is a small and vulnerable child, whose only knowledge is being loved and looked after in a Western environment. I’m all for integrating children back into their homes and villages, but to pluck him out of his home without warning and set him down with a relative he's scared of and can’t even bear to look at, was almost too much for me. I didn’t want to leave him there and as we went back to the car, listening to him crying as Bibi took him away, I wanted to cry myself.

Joel wasn’t ready to go home and I worry about him. I was up for hours in the night, thinking and praying and wishing I knew that he was safe. He’s still malnourished and recently has had malaria. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to see that in a situation like that he could easily lose weight and it will be a miracle if he doesn’t get sick again.

Most of the babies are fine to go home, but some are different. They have different temperaments and we need to treat them accordingly. For the most part I’m happy that they are going back to people that love them and that they will grow up in their own home and their own culture. Not Joel though. My heart hurt for him yesterday and it hurts for him still.

Please pray for Joel and for these children.

xoxo,

-Hannah