August 8th - Andrés

This morning I was at the clinic from 6:30am - 12:30pm, meaning I missed church. I am going to try to be able to get to church next Sunday as it is our last Sunday here & I have not yet been able to sit through a service, due to the demands of the clinic and all of the children here with chicken pox. We'll see what we can work out now that Leigh is here.

I found out that Andrés made it to church and immediately made a point of seeing him when my shift was done for the morning. He's been sick all this last week and has only been out of the boys volunteer dorm working for about a day or two. I'm thankful that he's 15 years old and, for the most part, can fend for himself but it was time to check in on him. He said that he's feeling 80% (that's how we measure our health, since it's easy for me to understand...being a mathematician), so that made me feel better. I told him to stop down at the clinic during my late afternoon hours to check in once again because I had a cell phone for him that one of the volunteers who had come earlier in the summer had left behind for future volunteers. That way we could communicate daily if I wasn't able to see him (as was the case last week).

I was back at the clinic from 3:00 - 7:00pm and it was eventful. Between 3 other volunteers (who stopped by for various reasons) and myself, we spent 2 hours trying to get a tangled comb out of the hair of a girl who tried to "roll the comb up her hair until it got stuck". I think that this is something every girl tries (I know I have and the other 3 volunteers admitted to it too), but once you get to the point where it's completely stuck and it either kills your scalp to get it out or it needs to get cut out - that's really the last time you try it. We got as much as we could out, but the last bit had to be cut. She cried and cried (the girls really don't like having their hair cut here), but unfortunately the comb was knotted so tight in her hair that there were no other options. She was still sobbing after the comb was out, so I ran back to our dorm to get all of the clips I had brought along and a few glittered bobby-pins that were left by another volunteer and showed her how to put up her hair so that no one would notice that small patch that was cut only an inch from her scalp. That seemed to help and she's had her hair done beautifully ever since!

Andrés stopped by and I had him bathe the boys before he left. Each of the children at the clinic needs to shower in the morning after they wake and then again before bed. It was nice to have a second person there helping like that because it's difficult to monitor the showers and the children who are still playing in the clinic. When Andrés left, just the girls had to shower, and since they are older - it went much smoother.