Day 17

Today has been hard!
I had a 3 hours break so I accidently fell asleep on the sofa with Gatsha curcled up on me!
Grubs was very hard! I was on my own and it was the first time I had ever doen it. I felt like such an idiot!
On a lighter note we had the 'jewels of hope' sales tonight. It was lovely!
TLC will be starting their project in September for the street kids here. It was a very moving presentation and I felt my eyes fill up a number of times!

Day 11

Day 11
Today was our day off. We visited Lesotho. Our guide drove like a maniac! We visited a school, the kids there walk 2 and half hours to school then another 2 and half home again!! Commitment!
We also did a hike up a mountain to see some cave men paintings, which was actually quite cool. We had to climb through caves and over rock piles, was quite fun! After the hike we visited a witch doctor, it was actually quite scary! Then later on we tried some home made beer - it was gross!! They tried getting us to eat fried mice!

Day 10

Day 10
A new premature baby arrived at TLC today, her name was Nikiwey, she’s so cute! Jolene moved up to Fledglings today!

Night Shift 2

Night shift 2
This whole night shift thing is trying my patience! Trying so hard to remain calm when I’m stressed at people. It’s not their fault its just me being tired and groggy!
The work tonight though seems ok. I’ve kept myself busy. Its now 11:30 and as yet I haven’t fallen asleep. I’ve cleaned the baby baths! Mopped the floors, cleaned bottles and generally did odd jobs that needed doing! Alongside obviously looking after the babies!!
Wooho! I stayed awake the whole night!!! The TLC team fell asleep but I stayed awake!! Feel so proud!!

Night Shift 1

Night Shift 1
So I’m sitting here at 10:45 and I’m so tired! It’s quiet now and that’s a bad thing cus I’m going to get even more tired.
Well, hated last night, I fell asleep about 3 times!! It was horrible!
At 6am I went to bed. Slept rather well during the day but the water wasn’t on at TLC so we couldn’t have a wash!

Day 8

Day 8
Today we went to a South African church, it was quite cool actually, lively! After the church service we went to an African market! Am on night shift tonight so need to get a bit of sleep

Day 7

Day 7
I’ve been up to my eyeballs in washing today!!! I know now how my mum must feel!!
Popped into the nest today to see how Melinda was getting on. She’s grown so much!! She had a dummy in her mouth, it was so funny, it covers most of her face!! She’s doing really well!
Faith is still poorly and has been readmitted to hospital. Hopefully she will be okay.
Rilah is better now.
Spent the afternoon cleaning the creepy crawlies toys, they were disgusting!!! It was rewarding though to see how clean they looked afterwards!

Day 3

Heya i'm having a great time here at the moment. It really is amazing, even though im not very well. I have a tummy bug. The bug is going round the whole orphanage at the moment.

I had a phonecall from the hospital in Johannesburg telling us that two premature babies had been abandoned. One little boy and one little girl. They weighed 1.6kg each. They are sooo tiny! I was asked to go to hospital to see them. I dressed the little girl, now called 'Melinda' and got to cuddle, play and feed them both. They are so gorgeous even in an incubator!!! The little boy was named Trevor. It was so cute.

There is one little girl called Faith, and she is 18 months. Faith is HIV positive and last night we were told that they didnt think she would make it. But she is, she's really fighting. She is such a gorgeous little girl.

Some more good news is that 2 babies got adopted, Neo (a little boy) and Isabella (a little girl). Neo is going to live in Germany and Isabella is going to Denmark.

It is such an amzing experience here, i will update you again soon!!!

Day 6

Day 6

Faith made it through the night!

Day 5

Day 5
Am ill today, been up since 2am throwing up! Not nice! Had to spend the day back at the cottage sleeping.
This evening everyone returned really upset. Apparently Faith was really poorly and she might not make it through the night. Also one of the TLC team from America was called to say her dad had died during the night.
So, yeah, today has been really tough.

Day 4

Day 4
Melinda was out of her incubator today because she has a fever; she seemed to perk up again later so hopefully she will be okay!
Faith came home today!! Lois (one of the girls on the team) is a children’s nurse so will look after her tomorrow!
Rilah (one of the babies in the nest) is ill today, he couldn’t keep any of his milk down. Bless him.

Day 2

I’m so tired!!! Its only 9pm and I’m in bed! I’m absolutely shattered! Today I ahd to be at TLC for 8:30am! Once I got there I was put doing storage clean out. We had to tidy boxes of hundreds of milk formula! The upstairs part had to be tided so I got that job!! Next we transported so much baby equipment from the stores to the outside garage. We also moved 1600ish baby food jars that were out of date. Its such a shame really. People give TLC out of date food as if they would feed babies stuff that isn’t valid for children normally. It feels like these children are regarded as second-class citizens!
I did a lot of manual lifting today – it was such hard work but also very fun! My ankles and back kills now though!
After doing all the lifting I hung out in creepy crawlies and grubs for a bit. While in grubs Marion (team leader) asked me if I wanted to go with one of the TLC staff to pick up 2 new premature babies that had been abandoned in Johannesburg hospital! On the way to the hospital I found out a lot about some of the babies stories and stuff. One of the sad stories was that there are lots of girls between 12 and 14 that are raped due to the old wives tale that sex with a virgin will cure HIV. Many of these girls then become pregnant. One of these girls still lives at TLC and is such a strong girl, I feel so proud to have met such a strong character.
At the hospital we went up to the baby ward and went to 2 incubators. The babies were just so tiny!! As soon as I saw them I fell in love with them. I was asked to dress the baby girl and get her ready to leave. I remember just sitting there looking at her and thinking how beautiful she was. She was born August 2nd and was 8 weeks premature weighing just 1.6kg!
When we got back to TLC both babies were placed in incubators and I was allowed to feed the baby girl, it was so amazing!! Later on the manager of TLC, Joanna came round and named the babies Trevor and Melinda.
Other things that happened today was that 2 babies Neo and Funiwe (Soon to be called Isabelle) have new parents. Neo is going to a new home in Germany. His new family are lovely! They already have a little girl that they adopted from Vietnam, she’s so cute too! Funiwe is going to a family in Denmark.
One of the little girls at TLC is 18 month old Faith, she is in hospital at the moment with pneumonia, we aren’t sure if she will survive. It’s really sad.

Day 1

Day 1
After a very long flight (10 hours 45 minutes!) we arrived in South Africa. It seems so weird! There seems to be money in Johannesburg but then almost immediately outside there is graffiti and slum like buildings. Its hard to explain.
The weather is lovely, sunny but not too hot! We arrived at TLC at about 2pm and had a tour around. They have 4 baby rooms:
Nest = 0-3 months
Fledglings = 3-6 months
Grubs = 6-crawling
Creepy Crawlies = Crawling to older
We have been given so much to do, its unreal! I don’t think I’m going to remember everything!
The babies are so cute!!! Jolene is gorgeous! She’s a little baby girl from Nest.

Today!

heya

So todays the day! I fly at 8o'clock tonight! I'm leaving at midday so as I can meet the team beforehand and check weight limits on suitcases!

I slept really well last night which suprised me seeing as usually when I'm excited I cant sleep! But I suppose its a good thing seeing as I probably wont sleep on the flight!
I'm hoping the plane will have movies and stuff on them cus otherwise I'm going to get soooo bored!! Hoping they might have Madagascar on the flight, but I doubt it! (They sometimes have movies on flights while they are on at the cinema! They did with Shrek 2!)

This is so unfair! I cant find any decent songs on the music channels! 3 weeks wihtout music and the last song I listen to the morning before I fly is Britney Spears followed by Billy Piper! Its sooo annoying!! oh well! I expect there will be lots of music over in South Africa that I will grow to love!

Anyway, hopefully this blog will be updated during my time in South Africa, If I can I shall email people as well. We'll see how much internet access I can get shall we!

Take care
speak soon!

Jen