Ireen Visits Orphanage

Since Ireen came home to live with us we have taken her to the orphanage where she came from on several occasions.  There was one auntie who had a special bond with Ireen, Auntie Katherine.  For one year, Auntie Katherine cared for Ireen, nursed her to health and helped her adjust to life without her biological mother.

It has been said that if a child bonds well to their caregivers she is less likely to have issues bonding to her adoptive parents.  It was apparent 3.5 years ago that Ireen had bonded to Katherine and for that we owe Katherine a debt of gratitude.  I shudder to think of what would have happened to Ireen had God not placed Katherine in her life to bridge the gap until we adopted her.

Pray for Katherine and she contemplates leaving her work with the orphanage.  Recently, there has been a lot of turn-around in the children placed in the orphanage.  On top of that, the children who were there from the beginning of the orphanage have all been adopted or family members have claimed them.  For Katherine it seems to be a fitting time for her to move on.  She will forever hold a special place in our hearts, however, as the Auntie who cared for Ireen before Mama could.

Guava Mouth

The guava tree is loaded.  With the branches bending so low under the weight of all the fruit, Ireen doesn’t need to climb the tree to pick guavas.  Guava is fortified with vitamin C, so Ireen and I sat down for a late afternoon snack.  We had a lot of fun making faces at each other – and the guavas were so tasty!

Ireen’s Hair Gets Plaited

Ireen is so excited!  She just got her hair plaited (braided with extensions).  Thankfully, I have a friend named Grace who was able to come to our house in order to do Ireen’s hair. I say “thankfully” because it takes about 6 hrs to do all of Ireen’s hair .  Ireen has learned to enjoy getting her hair done while watching some of her favorite movies.

Ireen’s Krispie Treats

Ireen loves helping mama in the kitchen.  Last weekend we were headed for an international braii (cook out) and brought along a side dish and dessert.  For the dessert I thought I would be “American” and brought along rice krispie treats.  However, when you use grape and strawberry flavored “Malvin the Mallowsaurus” marshmallows and rice krispies made in South Africa, the results are anything but “American”.  See the sequence of events below:

For the Love of Trees

A Tree House

A tree house, a free house, a secret you and me house,
A high up in the leafy branches cozy as can be house.

A street house, a neat house, be sure and wipe your feet house
Is not my kind of house at all ~ let’s go live in a tree house.

Shel Silverstein

Ireen has been drawn to climbing trees for as long as we can remember.  Each and every day, she makes her way up into her favorite guava tree in the backyard. She may not be visible, but we know she’s up there because of the way she chatters.  It’s like she is talking to an old friend.  When she feels mellow, sad, excited, or uneasy…she climbs.  Even after the noon showers and the tree is soaking wet she still asks,  “Can I climb the tree?”  For the most part she has a pretty good safety record, though she has fallen a number of times.  But routinely, she picks herself up after shedding a few tears and again ascends the tree.

Nowadays she’s an expert climber.  She swings from branch to branch with ease and dismounts with her famous flip. Yesterday, I found her 20 ft up in a tree at Ciyanjano.  Emma Whitfield was also with her and the two were as happy as they could be.  I wasn’t upset with her for climbing that high.  A few words of caution are in order, but Ireen likes to go that high and seems un-phased by it.  The fact that she made it up there by herself proves how daring she has become, not to mention how strong her upper body has become.  For the most part, it seems a healthy activity as she exercises her muscles and her imagination.

This White Girl is Trying!

One of the many adventures in adopting Ireen has been learning how to take care of her hair.  Honestly, I’ve really enjoyed it!  I’ve learned so much and am always eager to learn more or better ways of doing things. Recently, I decided it was high time I learned how to relax Ireen’s hair by myself.  I’d seen Zambians do it a number of times and had asked a lot of questions.  It seemed straight forward enough.

Admittedly, I was nervous.  I’ve heard horror stories of damaging the hair and scalp.  I was careful not to get the cream solution on her scalp and left it in for the minimum amount of time.  As I was washing the relaxing cream out of her hair I noticed my fingernails were yellow.  Gross yellow, too.  Just think fungal nail yellow.  I also had a small cut on my thumb that was throbbing!

Since Tim and I were going on a double date that night, I clipped my nails as far down as I could and then painted over them to cover the yellow.  Later that night I asked my Zambian friend about it and she said rather incredulously, “You didn’t wear gloves?”

Yeah…that would have been smart.  Ireen’s hair was fine at least.

Best Girl Costume ages 4-5

Every year a local private school, Baobab College, puts on a fire works display in early November.  We’ve never gone to it and had no idea what to expect.  Tim stayed home with Ian while Andrea and Ireen went with Karen and Tracy Singleton.

I noticed there was a “Fancy Dress” competition to be held open to all children.  Ireen and I worked in the afternoon to create her costume, a black-eyed susan in a flower pot.  Her petals were made of construction paper and covered with yellow crepe paper (aka kreepy paper) and her flower pot was a paint can with the bottom cut out.

We arrived and were amazed and the magnitude of the event, it could rival many county fairs in the States.  After gaining our bearings, Ireen and I stood in line for “candy floss” (aka cotton candy).  After that we got chicken lollypops for dinner.  In no time the costume competition was ready to start.  There were quite a number of children but only about 10-15 in Ireen’s age group.

After her group walked across the stage, the lights went out.  I budged through the crowd, found Ireen’s hand and pulled her out.  She was crying.  She’d never seen children dressed up as witches, mummies, gruesome creatures etc.  I was done with the competition and regretting that I’d pushed her into it.  After another 45 min – 1 hr once they had gotten lights back on and completed all the other age groups, the winners were announced for each group.

Ireen won…well, the “weed in the flower pot” is what she was called J . She received a gift and a fizzer (kinda like laffy taffy).  Then we saw fire dancers and finally the fireworks display.  The display was amazing and midway through Ireen exclaimed, “Probably the fireworks are for all the children who won!”  Tracy, Karen and I got a good laugh out of that.