fragile life

two days ago everyone at the hospital went on strike. so needless to say we´ve been pretty busy, since babies who can´t get care at the hospital come here. one mother brought her one month old baby, who has pneumonia and is severely malnourished. he weighed only 3 1/2 lbs. his body is about as big as his head, and his arms are as thick as my finger. i kept checking to see if he was breathing...he looked like he was dead.

so yoko and i have been helping care for him, giving him his medicine and using a nebulizer so he can breathe (there´s this mask that´s supposed to fit over your nose and mouth, and it covers his whole face). we´ve also been giving him special formula to help him gain weight. he already looks so much better--he cries, stretches, has more color, and makes the funniest faces when we give him medicine--must not taste very good. we weighed him again today and he gained 7 ounces! Ricardo loves it and calls me and yoko "la mamá y la tía." but he´s not recovered yet, and your prayers are still definitely needed; the mom almost left because she thought we were giving him too much medicine, and we had to have child protection people come. there´s been babies who went home healthy and had to come back because they were malnourished again, so hopefully that doesn´t happen to this little guy.

on a lighter note, we had pizza today for lunch, and it was surprisingly similar to american pizza. they call it "pigsa," or at least that´s what it sounds like to me. the kids came running to tell me and i thought they were talking about some strange native food or something.... we´re definitely gaining a few pounds here (or at least i know i am), they give us the diet and portions of malnourished kids and unfortunately running around after kids all day doesn´t seem to burn the calories you might expect. :-)

last night the kids were all drawing pictures, and one boy named ricardito (ricardo´s son hehe) gave me one with my name written at the top: "micha" (which is how most of them pronounce my name...a couple kids call me mita) I said, no it´s spelled "misha," and he wrote that, then told me, "see, micha is your name in español, and misha is your name in inglese." i thought that was funny. a couple of the kids are determined to teach me miskito, and apparently they think the best method is to speak only miskito. they´ve been at it for a day or so now, and i think they just enjoy seeing the confusion on my face. i´ve actually picked up a little though, and they keep a tally of how many words yoko and i know. ;-)

well we have to get back to the house. keep us in your prayers and God bless you!