August 8th, 2011 - LICE !!!

The girls’ kitchen still has not been fixed (as far as the flooding goes), so we found ourselves hauling dirty dishes once again up to the lavanderia. While we were up there preparing the dishes to be washed, Doris found a louse in my hair! UGH…that’s a first for me in my 4 trips down here. Now I’ll need to get my hair checked out to see if that was a loner or if there’s more. We have shampoo treatments down here, so hoping that if I do have lice – it’ll get taken care of before I get home. My roommate (Julie) had it yesterday and had to give herself a treatment last night. They sure are ugly little things!

I worked at the clinic again with Erika from 8-11am, and while there made sure she bathed once again (kids in the clinic bathe in the morning after waking and again before heading to bed), ate, and then I washed dishes, swept & mopped and cleaned up a little.

After this, Katja had told me that the Maryland group was over at the toddler house sizing the babies. When I got over that way, they had already finished and were headed elsewhere. Because lunch was quickly approaching, I decided to just meet them back at their volunteer house for a quick update before heading to the little girls’ kitchen again for the lunch hour and dish duty.

After lunch, I caught up with John in the yards & gave him some paletas con chile (suckers/lollipops coated with hot pepper). It seems that most of the children & staff here at Emmanuel really like the Mexican treat – and it’s not really available to them in town. I headed to the tienda out front with Julie so that she could get some more saldo, and on our way back I decided to have Karla (who was out in the yards) check my hair for lice. Julie highly recommended her. Of course she found quite a few…okay, MANY. She said that she did not see any eggs/nits though, so when she finished pulling all she found out of my hair, I washed my hair with a lice treatment and Daysha checked me afterwards and didn’t find anything. I’m going to go back to Karla tomorrow to make sure I’m clear. From what I’ve heard from the volunteers – the lice must be really terrible this year because in the 4 years I’ve been here, this is the first year I’ve gotten it (and many other volunteers have gotten it more than once…some 4-5 times in the summer they’ve been here). Although I realize if it’s going to happen – it’s going to happen, I just want to be CLEAR by the time I come home so that when I hug my kids, they are not exposed to it right before school starts.

I had to be at the little girls’ house at 5pm to help with bathing. After all were settled in, the older girls who stay with and watch over the little ones headed to the gymnasium (Monday nights are their nights to go)…so I went along. I played soccer with them out on the court, which didn’t go so well at first. They put me at goalie – and I had never played soccer before in my life (so they scored quite a bit on me, but I did block a few). Then they decided to switch my position with someone else, which went a lot better for our team!

Afterwards Esperanza served noodles with hot dogs and a bottle of Coke to the girls. I ran up to the volunteer house to get them some paletas. They were surprised by how hot they were! When playtime was over, I had to head to the clinic to spend the night. There are now two girls in the clinic, Erika and Evelin, but they should be going home tomorrow (hooray)! As I entered the clinic, I was greeted by thousands (literally) of ants who were heading into the building in search of the 3 noodles that had been dropped on the floor during supper time. That brought back many memories of living in Mexico and the necessity of keeping the floors completely clean…sweeping and mopping multiple times daily in order for the insects to not find the inside of your house pleasant. Any hint of food & they will come! I swept them all out into the grass (perhaps there would be some enticing meal there?) and mopped the clinic for the evening. Joy brought me some household insect-killing spray to get the ones that were hiding underneath the wall.

I haven’t really gotten to spend any time helping the Maryland group with measurements, so hoping to do that tomorrow.