Tshepo ya Bana News

-

It is a rainy Saturday here. It started raining around one in the morning and continued until after 8. The sky has remained gray and there is a definite chill in the air. Winter is coming…

We have had a busy week at Tshepo ya Bana. On Tuesday, Darin, Nona (a volunteer) and I headed to town to run a few errands. We also had to bring something to a social worker who handles the case of one of our children. While we were there, we left messages for two other social workers. We then stopped at another office to try and figure out what’s going on with another child’s case. It appears that in the one case, no social worker has taken responsibility, for various and complicated reasons, for over a year. We were glad that we stopped in and hope that the ball is now rolling, although that remains to be seen.

We arrived home a bit after noon and, lo and behold, one of the social workers we had left a message for drove up. We spoke with her about what is needed for this little guy to become available for adoption. We actually have a few things we can do to try and help the process along, but again, it’s complicated.
On Wednesday, the other social worker we left a message for rocked up. I don’t think she appreciated my aggressive nature, but this whole system makes me want to pull my hair out. There are social workers who do what they need to do and they do It in a timely manner (well, timely for South Africa), and then there are social workers who want to do what needs to be done, but are being held up by biological families, the courts, the lack of funding or a host of other reasons. Then there are the social workers who want to blame someone else for the lack of progress in their caseload. Those are the ones that are probably going to really not like me, but I am pretty sure I can handle their disdain.

If you are counting, we had four face to face visits with social workers in 2 days! Really, we had 5 visits over 3 days because Baby Boo-boo was picked up by her new family on Monday and her social worker was here for that happy occasion. That leaves us with one more social worker to connect with as our little Amo is here per her mother’s request, which is a different kind of case entirely compared to all the others.

In other TYB news, we just started a Facebook page! So if you are on Facebook, come and like our site, please. I will be posting more family/personal stuff on my own Facebook page now, although I am guessing the lines will always be a bit blurred. I also working on a new website for Tshepo ya Bana. I do not understand web design stuff at all, so it might still be a while until it is up and running, but I’ll let you know when it’s ready. I know there are some people who have started reading our blog for TYB updates and info and many of you aren’t necessarily interested in what’s going on with our family of four, although you are welcome to keep reading here as well.

I don’t think I mentioned it on this blog, but we had an outbreak of impetigo over the school holidays. It started on one little guy who has eczema quite severely and quickly spread all over his body. Then we noticed spots on three more of the boys. Tyson and Jori also got it, were sent home from school one day and managed to infect at least one child at their school even though they were already taking antibiotics and were supposed to no longer be contagious. Everyone seems to have kicked the impetigo and we hope to not see any new eruptions! Now we are dealing with coughs and colds, which will probably stick around now for the next 4 or 5 months. Did I mention that winter is on its way?

Happy weekend everyone!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connection and Community

-
Image
When we had made the decision to uproot our lives in the US and move to South Africa, I was so hungry for information about what living in South Africa would look like. We had been to South Africa several times as a couple, Darin had come on work trips, and we had spent 10 weeks here with our children. We knew some people, had been into various shops, and had a familiarity with the sounds of English being spoken with a variety of accents. However, there is a big difference between leaving home to visit a place for a few weeks or months and entirely uprooting your life in one place to start over in another. What were the schools like, would I have access to familiar ingredients to cook with, what about healthcare?  I scoured the internet to find stories about living in South Africa and found a few women who were more than happy to answer my questions, however random and weird they were. There was Annie, an American living in Pretoria, whose entire blog I read in one day and when Dar...
Read more

New friends

-
On Saturday, we finally met the DiCocco’s. I had first found out about Billy, Trace and their family through my friend Sarah, who had met them at Mars Hill church. Trace writes a blog, which I began stalking as soon as I knew we’d be moving to South Africa. Strangely enough, my other friend Sarah and I later figured out that the family I kept going on and on about used to be her neighbors! Such a small world. The DiCocco’s have been living near Johannesburg for several years doing ministry with a few different organizations. I loved reading through her blog, seeing the pictures, and imagining what our life might look like once we moved to South Africa. As our move got closer, I began to email Trace and she would answer all my crazy and not so crazy questions. It was so wonderful to have someone over HERE who used to live right near us and knew all about the transition process. Since we’ve been her, we’ve continued to email and we also made plans to meet up with them to check out a ho...
Read more

Family Fun Friday

-
Image
We have almost reached the end of the winter holiday. Tyson and Jori go back to school on Wednesday. We have some fun activities planned for the next few days, but we will also be cleaning bedrooms and setting out uniforms and lunch boxes. Let the school fun begin! Overall, it has been a fun holiday. Tyson and Jori have both had school friends over to play, we've made it to church twice, we've been out for pizza, had donuts, did some baking, and more. Friday, however, was probably the highlight of the school holidays for us. The day started with Jori losing her first tooth! Our baby girl is growing up. We had a few errands to run and took the kids with us. While Darin was busy at Cashbuild ordering supplies for an upcoming building project at TYB, Tyson, Jori and I went to Pick N Pay and King Pie for a little treat. We shared with Darin, of course. We spent a few hours at home, then headed out at 3 for our big adventure. We drove slowly and took a mini game drive on ...
Read more