I was forced to come inside around dusk today because I had about 20 mosquitoes buzzing around my head out on the veranda. I now have a mosquito coil conveniently placed in the doorway to stop them from coming into the house. There are enough in here already! The sliding glass door on the veranda is broken and only closes halfway. The door is just a gate and so the cat and mosquitoes can enter at will. As far as I know no other critters apart from a few big beetles and moths have been coming in.
Yesterday was Flag Day. The school next door had a big celebration for the students and several bands marched up and down the street (some definitely better than others). I slept in a bit (until 7:30am). I spent all morning waiting for the electricity to come on so I could go over to the hospital to make the therapeutic milk for the kids (it needs to be blended in a blender). By 10:30 there was still no power. I went to find the guys in charge and was told it would be on soon. Still didn’t happen. Turns out the blockage for the hole in a damaged water pipe in the pediatric ward came out and when the power goes on, water spurts everywhere. We had to wait for Albert to come and re-block the hole. Why they just haven’t replaced the pipe is beyond me. By noon I couldn’t wait any longer to get the food to the kids so I attempted to blend the mixture by hand. It’s pretty difficult to blend oil into a water, powered milk, sugar solution. The oil kept rising to the top and the milk was all clumpy. If I were the kids I wouldn’t go near the stuff. I apologized to the moms and told them to mix it well before giving it to the kids. When the power finally came back on around 2pm I remade the milk with the blender and brought the nice homogenous milk shake-like drink to the kids. Much better.
A new 4 month old baby was admitted yesterday. I didn’t see the mom at all yesterday, but today she was there and I was able to talk to her. She had not fed he baby all day because she does not have any baby formula (the therapeutic milk that we make is not fit for infants under 6 months). A container of powdered baby formula is ridiculously expensive ($11) and so it’s no wonder why the moms can't afford it! This was the same problem we had on Thursday with the two other mothers with little babies. We ended up buying formula for them (with CNP money) but today I didn’t have access to the cash drawer. In addition, I’m running extremely low on cash myself. I’ve been paying for things out of pocket because Yva, the woman with the key to the cash drawer, has been out sick. I’m down to 300 goudes – 100 short to buy the formula! Luckily the other moms are great. I asked if they would share the baby formula with the new mom until Monday and they agreed.
