I am so very, very proud of my kids. They are a really amazing group of young people that are hurdling over every obstacle that has been put in their way. But, I am realizing that being a mom is not so simple, especially with 40 children.
I've discovered that with most families, when a child is brought into a sponsorship program, the family completely backs out of all responsibility. Not that they were being responsible in the first place. I've got kids that have been in boarding school for several years and the parent has not bothered to visit even once. I've got kids that have parents that have disappeared. I've got kids that get sent to school without eating breakfast. Need I go on.
So, since I am the one to fill in the gap, I frequently find myself overwhelmingly busy. Like yesterday.
I woke up with my day planned out, sure that I was going to get much of my paperwork (which frequently gets stuffed to the side) out of the way at least for a month or so. I think I must have been dreaming.
Before children even started arriving for school, one of the boarding schools called to tell me that one of my boys was sent to school without shoes. How this happened I'm still trying to figure out. I bought him shoes just two months ago. So, they told me that he has been attending class in slippers but I need to bring him shoes. So, off I went to purchase shoes. I might add that guessing a child's size when he is not with you is not that simple.
Then I headed to the school. I was able to deliver the shoes to the child. Then I was also able to check on all my kids there. Most are doing well. Some needed to be talked to. I'm still trying to figure out this discipline thing. Not so simple.
Then I was told that another one of the young girls wets the bed. Could I please get a mattress cover. This meant going about an hour back to town, looking for plastic and then looking for someone to sew it together to form a mattress cover and going an hour back to the school. A little side note: the mattress covers are a nuisance. They make a lot of noise at night. But, thanks to a wonderful friend in Little Rock, I should soon have a couple of mattress covers that don't make noise!
Back to the subject. Mary, who lives with me, needed new socks. So, I went back to town to look for them. This is when it decided to pour down rain. I had to stand in place for about 40 minutes until it stopped.
I finally made it back home around 4 in the evening to discover I again had plumbing problems. This time instead of no water, water wouldn't stop pouring from the bathroom shower. Now to find a plumber. The plumber showed up two hours and 6 buckets of water later. Maybe now I will actually have water (that is normally). This may be a bit of a high expectation but it's ok to hope.
Around 6, I realized I hadn't eaten the whole day and Jackie and Mary would be needing supper. Jackie doesn't have much appetite these days because of the chemo but needs to eat. The ONLY thing I can get her to eat is matooke. It is not in abundant supply these days so I had to go with her on my back to look for it. Even if it wasn't looking for matooke, we would have been looking for something to eat anyway as my pantry was bare (not a lot of time to shop recently). We finally found it, made it back home, cooked in the dark (since power had gone), and finally ate suppler around 8:30 in the evening.
I managed to get Jackie bathed and in bed by 9:30, attempted some paperwork, and then wanted to sleep. I realized that I had hung my sheets out to dry that morning (they had been washed the day before) and no one had brought them in during the rain. They were still wet so I just slept.
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