Sonrise Babies home

I may have spoken a bit about Damali’s new baby’s home- it is actually called Sonrise (I had forgotten). She is a good friend and fellow staff member of GIVE international with me. Damali started this baby’s home about 3 weeks ago, so like I said previously it is brand new and has nothing, except 9 children full time. She employs two women to stay the nights with her, and then about 4 others help volunteering during the day. One of the biggest things Damali and I talked about last week was the fact that she hadn’t yet taken her children in for HIV/AIDS testing, or gotten anything medical done. There is a free childrens hospital in town, but for some reason Damali is opposed to go there as she says the staff are terribly mean to children (I think this stems from when she herself was an orphan and was brought here) so she had yet to get any of the children tested; an extremely important thing to do as nearly all the children come from parents that have died from AIDS. Mainly, she was just terrified to find out.

Thankfully, I met an amazing guy from the UK named Alex who is staying at the guesthouse and was friends with my brother last summer here. He works at a school called Lordsemede Vocational in town, which is where a few of my friends two years ago worked. There is a health clinic attached to the school and Alex generously offered for us to bring all the children there for testing. So yesterday Miko, James and I rented a mutatu bus (local 14 person bus) and driver and picked up all the children and staff members, and brought them over to the Lordsemede clinic. Damali would not come, she was so scared and nervous to hear the results of her children, so she stayed at home and paced and prayed. Alex and our other friend India met us at the gate and up we went to the clinic. The lab techs stayed overtime to help us out and after about an hour, all 9 were done and tested. Alex went in to find out the news from the lab techs and came back to a very anxious me. I searched his eyes for some news as he tried to contain a smile and then just said, “They’re fine. They’re all fine”.

“Fine?!” I asked, “like, they all tested negative?!” He laughed and told me again and again, and we laughed and rejoiced with disbelief with all the mums, James, Miko, India and the techs. One of the mums called Damali and tell her excitedly, and then we all trooped back down the hill to the mutatu to take them home. We passed around the sheet of paper that said the kids names and next to that, the word negative. Ha!

Alex and India came back with us to Sonrise to meet Damali and see the home. She met us at the gate and tried to contain her excitement, but every few minutes she would run up to me and whisper in my ear , “I can’t believe it. it’s a miracle. Considering their backgrounds..this should not be possible.” We took some group photographs outside to mark this day as a wonderful, truly miraculous day. Finally, the crew of us left and took some short cuts walking through the villages to the main road to catch a boda into town for dinner.

As we sat around a table at Baraza waiting for our dinner, we raised our ice cold Nile Specials to a very momentous day in all our lives.