Okahandja

On Tuesday morning I woke up extra early and headed to Okahandja, a town about 2 hours North of Rehoboth, with a woman named Crystal, who works for an organization called ‘Orange Babies’. Orange Babies sponsors 5 orphanages and many other projects throughout Namibia, and is headquartered in Windhoek. So after making the journey to WH to get supplies, we headed further North to Okahandja, where we helped run a little ‘clinic’ at a settlement camp for displaced Namibians. Orange Babies has been distributing food and formula to parents in the settlement camp, and to ensure that the parents are not selling the food, the children who receive it are asked to come to a clinic once a month to be weighed, measured, and generally checked out. I got to help out with this process, seeing over 200 kids in a few short hours. I gave out vitamins and de-worming (kills intestinal parasites, etc.) medication, which will hopefully help the kids gain weight and absorb more nutrients.

Here is the table of deworming meds right as the clinic opened:

And here is the after picture:

Needless to say my hand was stained red afterward from opening so many of those little bottles! Trying to force little kids to swallow medicine they don’t want to took me back to my Peds clinical days, wiping the medicine off my face, out of my hair, etc. as it was spit back out at me by one little mouth after another :)

I had to say goodbye to Martin, who I’ve grown to love, this week at the hospital. He was being taken to Windhoek, by who I assume was Social Services. It was harder than I thought it would be to say goodbye to his precious face, and not knowing what he was headed to made it all the more difficult. But it was good to have the opportunity to pray over him before he left, that God would protect his vulnerable heart, that he would come to know and love the Lord at an early age, and that he would walk with Him all the days of his life.

Kristen returned to Namibia yesterday, after being gone at her brother’s wedding for the last 10 days, and what a welcomed return it was! It certainly wasn’t the same without her here, and it was so fun to have her back and get to hear all the stories of fun had by the old YAMS crew in Texas!

Happy early Birthday Dad… wish I could be there to help you celebrate!!

Much Love,

Mackenzie