The good news is, I'm PROBABLY not dying!

 First: I'm too lazy to do a Safari post, apparently, so you can see all the pictures here.

Ok, this time I have a better excuse for my extended absence than "I've been really busy" - I have, in fact, been running through the catalog of African ailments and also possibly the patience of several doctors. It all started a week and a half ago with a double bout of malaria and bronchitis for me and malaria and pneumonia for my friend Peter (see his lungs below). This, while unpleasant, was also a pretty great excuse to lay on the couch for a few days and watch movies until our brains melted and temperatures went away.

My sick buddy and my gorgeous friend Sydney a few days earlier at his birthday celebration

Unfortunately, it didn't work quite like that. Four days later, two days after finishing our courses of meds, I still had a fever and Peter was coughing up a lung several times a day (he must have had LOTS of lungs in there), so we went back to the hospital. This is when we got the pretty picture of Peter's lungs, after much wrestling, because the DOCTOR WE WERE SEEING DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO READ X-RAYS so he wouldn't order them. Thankfully I'm a pain in the butt and also know many of the doctors well through the work with the well, so we managed to get one done and read eventually, confirming pneumonia and getting an Rx for stronger antibiotics.

This should not be so difficult to get read in a hospital.

As for me, they did a typhoid test which came back sort-of-kind-of positive-ish, so they told me I probably had typhoid despite having had the vaccine, and gave me some antibiotics. Fast forward a few days to Monday, a full week after the initial diagnosis, when I had to go into Arusha with the hospital secretary (see the last post about church and chickens) to get some financial stuff figured out for the well drilling. He was, to say the least, a little concerned upon seeing me shivering violently for about an hour, and insisted on taking me to the referral hospital in Arusha on Tuesday. At this superfancy hospital, they still didn't have covers for the thermometer, necessitating an armpit thermometer reading, which my deodorant apparently screwed up by insisting I had no fever. After half an hour of shivering violently in the 80 degree waiting room, another patient complained and I grabbed the damn thermometer, wiped it down with my handy and omnipresent waterless hand sanitizer, and stuck that sucker under my tongue. THEN the believed I was sick.

Unfortunately, they concluded that the typhoid result WAS a result of the vaccine, and my blood was clear of any signs of bacterial infection, sooooo... basically they have no idea why I still have this stupid fever. Thankfully, the Jewish doctor network came through for me - the wonderful and well-connected Ruth Sack saved my life by harassing her brother, who is an infectious disease specialist, for a name of a specialist in Moshi, about an hour and a half away, who has gracefully agreed to see my diseased self tomorrow morning. So tomorrow I'm up early and heading to Moshi, and hopefully they will tell me I'm not dying and possibly even figure out what the hell is wrong with me. Crazy idea, I know.

As for everything else... it's been kind of a rollercoaster. Some things at the orphanage are going incredibly well, so let's start with the good. We have three chickens brooding, although they have laid their eggs in two next boxes and therefore insist on attempting to roost ON TOP OF EACH OTHER. None of them seem to have done this before. Regardless, we're hoping to successfully hatch at least a FEW chicks. It's all up to the cooperative powers of Porky, Lola, and Bugs.

Gracie, who was tiny and very sick with Malaria when I got here, and Loveness, who has moved up to be with the big kids all the time and is SO PROUD.

Zawadi looks silly with her hair gone but she is consenting to STAND as long as she can hold onto something, and can occasionally be cajoled into walking all of three steps before she makes her scrunchy pissed off face.

We had a ton of help lately from our neighbor and one of the world's sweetest fifteen year old boys, Frankie, who all the kids obviously adored beyond all reason.

David has been sick but on this particular day he was just ridiculously adorable in his matching outfits with Baracka, also attempting to eat his shoulder. Peter did nothing to stop these atrocities.

But the big news... we HIT WATER! It was earlier than we even expected, at around 50 meters - we had been afraid we would have to go to 100 meters or more, so this is very exciting. We still have to buy PVC pipes and get a pump installed to get water up and to the orphanage, but it's still a huge breakthrough and within a few weeks we should have a fully functional water system for the hospital and orphanage.

The drill rig and our personal Superman, Chuck.

The importance of keeping the health of the kids up and preserving the sanitation in the hospital was brought home powerfully this week, too. We lost one of our babies. Rezeki was very premature when he came to us three weeks ago, and had had several medical issues, including a nasty abscess and trouble eating. He was admitted to the hospital last week on Thursday, and he passed away on Sunday. I'm still numb and really struggling with the whole situation - several of us volunteers thought he was sicker than the mamas were giving credit for, he seemed to throw up everything he ate and had diarrhea, but he went to the doctors a few times and they never admitted him, so we convinced ourselves it was ok. And it wasn't. At all. And it's really, really difficult to think that maybe if we had pushed harder, he could have been saved. I tell myself I've been busy, and I have, but I can't shake the feeling that I should have known and I should have done something more.

So I'm trying not to be completely sunk by the despair of his tiny little life, and use these feelings instead to fuel pushing harder for better nutrition, for clean water, for more donations to hire more staff, for better organization of information between shifts... something to stop the wrenching of gaining my precious, beautiful, already adored beyond all reason new baby cousin Jamie, and in the same week losing a baby, a baby with no family, with no one to fight for him, whose name is already gone from the orphanage in the insane struggle to keep caring for the kids we have. And I understand that the mamas HAVE to be tough, have to block out the pain to keep doing the work that they do - but I'm not so tough. So I'm asking my mother to say Kadish for Rezeki this week, and it would mean a lot to me if you would keep him in your thoughts too. I can't stand the thought that he will be forgotten so fast. And, as always, any money will be turned into real improvements for these kids, so that they're healthy and so that they know that people out there in the world DO care about them.

Ok. That's all I can really handle for today, and I'm sorry to end this on kind of a bummer note. I will keep you all updated on the health situation as soon as I know what's going on, and also can get out of bed. Minor detail.