My Family

 

We enjoyed our Christmas holiday a lot. Christmas day we spent in the home village of Diana. We shared a meal with the family and celebrated Diana is still with us today.  
Diana Kambalame is currently 20 months old and has been living in the africare house for 10 months now. She finished her tuberculosis treatment and is doing very well. She is catching up, growing and learning fast. She loves singing and dancing! Every day when she comes home from school she sings new songs to me. She is very active and runs all day around. Beside singing and dancing, Diana loves animals. She helps the gardner every day feeding the chickens.
Every time I look at this girl I’m so proud of her. She is so young but lost all her close relatives. She has been malnourished since birth and diagnosed with TB twice however she never gave up. She still has often nightmares and her behavior needs a lot of correction but we know God is looking after her.

Maria loves going to school. She is able to count to 5 and is practicing on the alphabet. Her favorite word is NO! She speaks mostly Chichewa (the local language) and loves playing with her doll. She puts her in bath every morning, dresses her (with some help from mama) and put the doll on her back like Malawian women do with their babies. Maria’s grandmother likes to come for sleepovers in the Africare house. During the Christmas holiday she has spend a lot of time with us and enjoyed being around Maria. Maria loves to sing Chichewa songs with her grandmother.  
 

Hannah is a10 months old, adorable and very sweet girl. She talks in baby languages all day! She loves crawling around in the house and develops very well. When she is hungry she screams very loud. We make our own likuni phala from maize, soya and bean flower which she eats a lot! We are building up a better relationship with her grandmother. Her grandmother now comes to visit her once a month.

Brandina Yosefe recently joined us in the Africare house. She was born on the same day as Maria, two years later. She is now 3 months old and struggling to gain weight, she vomits most of her feeds. Brandina’s mother is mentally unsound; she is improving but not able to take care of her twins. She is taking care of Brenda however some days she is not interested in the child and leaves her all day alone inside the hut. The Grandmother is assisting her daughter a lot and because of her help Brenda is doing very well. Two girls were too difficult for the family and therefore Brandina is living with us.

At the moment it is raining season in Malawi which means we have to spend a lot of time inside the house. The house is filled with laughter, screaming, crying and singing all day. We read a lot of books, sing the same song over and over again and I try to teach the girls that playing is much nicer as fighting. However often they do not agree with me. We are looking forward to some sunshine and outside time again! The washing never ends and we are struggling great time to get it all dry. We are experiencing major power cuts so we cook often on charcoal. The maize and beans we planted are growing very well and the chickens are multiplying frequently.


Two weeks ago my mother arrived in Malawi and we are enjoying having her around. She is helping us a lot with Brandina! She loves taking care of her and is trying to feed her often small amounts so she keeps more of the feeding inside. We are very thankful she is able to visit us for 8 weeks. Maria and Diana already call her agogo (which means grandmother in Chichewa).

A Father to the Fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. Psalm 68:5

Love,

Nicole