A Day of Leisure

I wake up every morning feeling like a princess, and John...who knows what he's thinking, but I soon realize that it's a mosquito net surrounding our bed. It's another hot and humid day where rain would be welcome, as it brings a breeze and slight cooling of the air. The rain storms over here are intense. It rains so hard that it wakes you up at night, or if you're caught without an umbrella you're drenched in a minute. The rain is almost always accompanied by lightning and thunder that is loud and ominous.
We have made friends with all the guards who watch our apartment. They look forward to the kids and I coming out to play soccer in the small courtyard. I think it cuts down on the monotony of their day.

Today, the kids and I went to the hospital with John so that he could check on a few babies. We arrived just in time to wheel the babies from the NICU to another room. The air-conditioning was broken and has been for days, so the babies are getting over heated. The overhead lights have also been broken for days and John has been asking for these things to be fixed, but no one seems to be in any hurry. We have started to realize that this is the way it is in Liberia. MEG, GG, and I spent some time taking babies out to their mothers to breast feed. These babies hadn't eaten for close to 24 hours! Over here c-sectioned mother's spend their first 24 hours flat on their backs recovering. I'm not quite sure why this is, but think with some education we could change this to maybe 12 hours and then 6 hours. I was proud of the girls and how they helped the women with their babies. I also taught these mom's how take care of the umbilical cord. I haven't noticed any nurses teaching breast feeding or cord care to these new mother's. I think this is something the girl's and I could get the nurses involved with and then help with this ourselves.

We ended our day by going to the beach and playing a little soccer, but this soon became a huge game with boys from all over joining us. Balls are pretty rare over here; most kids use a bottle or a bunch of bags all bunched together for a ball, so I think they were excited to play with us. This beach was fairly clean. Most of their beaches have trash strewn all over the place. If the Liberians could just clean up all the garbage I think this country would actually be beautiful.

Goodnight,
Kim (mom)