Following Up

So many people have asked about Ndyezika’s exams, so I just want to assure you that I’ll post something AS SOON AS I know.  We anticipate results within a month.  Meanwhile he’s working at the health center and hoping to get married soon . . . We’re feeling very parental discussing his housing situation and in-law approach and potential wedding plans.

Kabajungu Margaret goes back to Kampala again this coming week for another round of chemotherapy.  She looks GREAT.  I love her smile.  Unfortunately I don’t get any information from Mulago except what is filtered through the father, so while I know she had a lumbar puncture to check for CNS spread I don’t know the result.  I asked him to try and bring back some copies of records.

Little Makuni, the severely malnourished child that was admitted just before we left in August for our retreat, is still hanging in there.  Part of me feels pretty discouraged that he still struggles; part of me can’t believe he’s still alive.  This morning I found him sitting alone in his bed clanking together two blocks Stephanie had given him to play with.  Yes, he was PLAYING.  That is a huge sign of recovery for Kwashiorkor, which leaves kids so lethargic.  He seems to have an appetite, so it’s hard to say if his persistent weakness and swelling are the result of inconsistent care and feeding (probably), his initial severity of disease (probably), or a concurrent infection with TB (possibly).  Pamela has really opened her heart to this child and tried to pray with his family and visit almost daily, plus I’m pushing the nursing staff on point one.  Not much we can do about point two.  And this week it occurred to me that his mother could have died of TB leaving him also infected . . . His labs are consistent with that.  So I started him today on TB medicines.  There is hope.

And speaking of nutrition, we had some bad news and good news this week.  The bad news was that the Stewardship Foundation denied Stephanie’s proposal for sustainability projects.  She had a budget of about 30 thousand dollars for growing g-nuts, supporting our agricultural extension workers, buying more goats for motherless and HIV-exposed babies, training health center staff and community workers about nutrition, and decentralizing our nutrition supplementation to outpatients in three health centers.  This 30 thousand dollars would have been in addition to the 20 thousand dollars (1,600 x 12 months) that we asked blog readers to pledge, for a total BundiNutrition budget of 50K dollars this year.  The good news is . . . .generous people have sent in for the year almost exactly the amount we need, 49K for 2007.  Two small grants, one creative church, and about fifteen individuals or groups!  God is so amazing.  Now, we’d like to know we can count on that next year (2008) since we have to give contracts to the three outreach workers.  Maybe we’ll get news of that . . . Or maybe God will ask us to just keep feeding the hungry and watching him bring in what we need.  Pray that we would be faithful with what we’ve received, and generous, and wise at the same time.

I’m so grateful that people read about Bundibugyo here and on team mates’ blogs, and respond.  Feel free to remind me to follow-up on things that are of interest!