HIV testing day for the children at the babies' home.

This week we started with the HIV tests for all the children from the babies' home. On Monday morning three women arrived with bags full of equipment. We all helped to get the table outside and make everything ready; like filling in the names of the children on the cards. When everything was prepared, the testing then began. The children who were younger than 1,5 years were too young to be tested so they could keep playing. One by one all the children got tested. Most of them were very brave and didn’t cry at all! What we didn’t expect was,  that we had the results immediately. We are happy because the results were very good. Only one of the children was positive, all the others were negative!

But there was more good news this week. Last week we did a workshop about activities for the workers of the babies' home. When we got to the babies' home last Monday we saw instantly that the children were playing with bottles of water. We were thrilled because this was one of the activities we did as  an example during the workshop. Nice to see that people really liked it and used it right away.

Also in the workshop we made a schedule for every day of the week. In the schedule we wrote down which worker is doing the activity on what day. We also wrote down who takes care of the younger children when the teacher gives lessons to the  older children. The other workers were sitting and playing with the younger children outside so the teacher could give all her attention to the older  children in the lesson. 

On Tuesday, it was Sherifah’s turn to do an activity and she did very well! Sge choose to draw with sidewalk chalk. Lilian and the teacher helped her and it was a great success! The children and the workers had both a lot of fun and a good time. They also involved the disabled children! Josephine, Stellah and even Hussein were also (with a little help) drawing with the sidewalk chalk.

On Wednesday we first thought we had a little problem, because not all the people had time to do the activity; but it was solved fast! The other workers were very enthusiastic when we asked if they wanted to do the activity that day. Nice to see that everybody was very flexible as well!  

Thursday we brought the activity book to the babies-home. It was finally finished! The teacher, Angela and Juma were very happy with it! In the afternoon the teacher and Florence immediately choose one of the activities that we wrote down in the book and they did a ball game with the children.  It was nice to see that it was used right away!

After all, it was a great week with lots of good news! Hopefully it will continue!

Written by; Ildi Hummelink & Maartje Libbers, volunteers from Holland, working in the Arise and Shine babies' home.