First Full Day

We had our first full day at HLCH on Saturday. At 8:30am we start the first baby feeding of our day. All 12 babies get fed a bottle and then are put outside in either a Bumbo, a squishy chair that even the littlest babies can hold themselves up in, or on a mat where the older ones are able to roll and crawl around. After they have been outside they get a bath, changed and then are put in their cribs. This whole process takes about two and a half hours. At about 11am, we went to the local stands on the main street near the home. Another volunteer, Rachel (19yrs old from Canada), who has been here for five weeks, showed us all the best places to go.

After this outing, we returned to HLCH for the 12:30pm baby feeding. I then helped the older children clean up the mess from lunch and watched them as they played and the oldest girls tried to "make" my hair. They got frustrated very quickly and decided that my hair was "too slippery and too big" for cornrows. The children here are the most self sufficient kids I have ever seen. When a two year old wipes out, instead of sitting there and crying, he stands up, brushes himself off and runs away. Or if he takes a while to do this, another kid his same age will walk over and try to pull him up. I am amazed by not only how they can deal with most things themselves but how they take care of each other.  After we walked to the big grocery store called Home Depo a man name Timothy gave us a free ride since it was our first day. He does this for all HLCH volunteers.

We helped with two more feedings that day, at 4:30pm and 8:30pm. I never thought of four hours as being a short amount of time, but the time between feeding goes by very quickly. There are two other times the babies eat, at 12:30am and 4:30am, but the staff does those. The days are very busy. There is always something to do.

At Happy Life Children's Home there are:

12 babies 1-7 months
13 infants 8-18 months
12 toddlers 2and a halfish-4 years
28 kids 5 and up

A total of 65
All of the older kids speak English but use Swahili to talk to the younger kids and staff.

My Favorite!

Our Corner

Same Corner but view from our room at HLCH

Walking home