the bright side

I had one afternoon of mild despair the other day when I last updated, mainly worried that I won't be able to sustain this project financially and everything seemed hopeless, but then I walked back up the hill to home and picked up both babies and i just knew that no matter what, I will make this work. I believe there are good people out there in this world who will help me sustain this, even if i can't do it all myself. So i'm just taking it as it comes. for now we have our little house rented for 3 months and the wages of our guard and cook and caregiver paid and we have food in our kitchen and most of all, we have big plans. and to me, that is the most important part because without big dreams and plans and hopes, none of this would be happening. but as it stands, i HAVE opened an orphanage, i HAVE given 10 children a family and clothes and a warm bed and food in their tummies and hope for a better future.
S and I have talked it over and we think the next step for the orphanage is to buy a 4wd van. it would serve many purposes. it would mean that during the day when S has nothing to do, he can either use the van as an airport shuttle (there's no public transport in lali, so it's the only way to get to town) or he can take tourists to the outlying rock hewn churches since he is a licensed guide. either way we estimate that we could earn enough income from a van to pay for at least a good portion of our daily expenses. the other good part about owning a van would be that it would save us alot of money with our flying to and from addis, and it would also mean that we would be able to drive the kids to dessie for things like dentists as we already know we need to make at least a couple of trips there. abraham may need glasses and temesgen really needs to go to a dentist and we need to buy a refrigerator which can only come from dessie etc. so a van is our first funraising goal. S estimates we need around 10,000 to buy a 4wd van that would fulfill all our needs, so when i get back to australia, that's what i will be trying to raise money for!
in the meantime, things here are going well, S managed to fix the bath yesterday so hopefully i will be able to have a warm trickle of a shower later! Hillary's darrohea is a bit better, our nanny is still tying rough scarves around hillary as a nappy of a nighttime and is still having to wash her at least once a night, but it's better than it was. ytinet has really warmed to me and only comes to me for comfort, which is very different to the early days when she would scream at the sight of me!! hillary is still S's girl and cries for him whenever he leaves the house. she eats nonstop and at the rate she is going will make a first class sumo wrestler. she's such a darling though, very sweet.
the sisters gabbayew and aesrasa have been fighting a bit lately and gashaw was in trouble for kicking today, but all of the got time outs and are behaving much better now. gashaw thought we were going to send him away though and was truly devastated, but we assured him that although we would send him to his room if he was naughty again, we weren't just going to send him away! poor kid came from a pretty terrible place, so its no wonder he was devastated. gashaw's parents are both dead and he was living in a truly horrible room with his deaf mute sister. the place he lived in was truly apalling and there is no way i would send him back to that life because it was pretty miserable.

our guard walked to his village yesterday for materials because we are building a chicken coop tomorrow and starting our permaculture gardens as well which is good! ayatil is a farmer when he's not working as a guard, so he is excited to have something constructive to do. im glad we will have a better supply of eggs as one of our kids in particular needs all the protein he can get as he has pretty severe kwashiorkor disease and looks about 9 months pregnant.

xxx