Yesterday I said that Quinton drew the short straw with picking up the children, but today it was Phil and my turn to draw the short straw. The last two times Quinton took the children to have AIDS tests and reported that the children did not cry, only Junior complained a little. Today Phil and I crazily took the children ourselves to the clinic while Prossy stayed to teach her class. Well things are very different here than back home. To start with Quinton had a different counsellor than we did, he said they were all told about what was happening etc. When I was sitting down with our counsellor I thought that this lady is actually quite scary. At one time she stood up and I thought I was in a movie scene, like the ones where there is a lady that stands up and she is gigantically tall and is about to get angry and beat some dweeby fellow up.
Then I was told to take the first, Blessed in to get tested, and as soon as we walked into the room she was crying. This was the first of a long process of holding children to give blood while they were crying out. It was not a nice experience at all. Both Blessing and Andrew had snuck out into the yard to get away, and it was almost impossible for me to get them to come back, they were crying in the car park. Eventually we got them all done and promptly got them out of there so they could get home and feel ok again. I think they will forgive us; they were laughing as we went over bumps on the way home.
Then Phil and I went to the markets and bought some slip on shoes for the new children. They all seemed happy to receive their new shoes. Then we dropped the car back to Erica for her to go down and take Kathryn and the matrons to the markets to buy the new children clothes, some only came in what they had on and some of those were not too good at all.
I’ve uploaded some more photos at my flicker site, so check it out if you like and look for my album called “Latest!”. Also Phil and I are trying to make some turkish pizzas from scratch tonight; hopefully it all turns out!
