With Love, From Neema: Pendo!

Yesterday was a great day!! I didn’t wake up until 8:30 which is sooo late to wake up in Africa considering the roosters, cows, and dogs start making noise around 5am. After I woke up, I took my miserably freezing cold bucket shower and got dressed for the day. As usual, I gave the dogs their flea and tick medicine and gave them daga (small fish), which they like to eat for all their meals. Two days ago, I met this girl named Samantha Karlin from California—she is Jewish and goes to Indiana and is an SDT there! She came back to Akili for the day- Akili day care is a daycare that we run at Tuleeni to bring in extra money. Yesterday morning, Akili got two new CCS volunteers—A boy named Levi from Montana and a girl named Hannah from Houston! She is actually from West University and went to Lamar High School! Such a small world. Around noon, Samantha and I walked into town and went to the Pristine Trails office and met up with Edward and Musa. Samantha, Musa, and I went to union for milkshakes and lunch and then we went back to Tuleeni. When we got back to Tuleeni, I started to give the children their new clothes, which I brought with me from America. They were soooo excited--- I will need to take more pictures of them in their clothes this week. I walked from mama’s house over to tuleeni to give the younger kids their clothes. The smiles that occupied their faces when they held their new clothes in hand were incredible. I have never seen children so happy. It warms my heart to know that I was able to help them some. While I was at Tuleeni, I found a puppy. It was stuck under a wooden fence and was crying so loud and nobody was helping it. I was able to dig out the dirt below the puppy and rescue her. I brought her home to mama’s house and asked her if I could keep the puppy. She told me that I could!! I pulled 20 ticks from her torn coat and ears and then I put her in a bucket and gave her a good bath. Then I fed her daga and milk and she fell asleep in my arms for hours!! Mama’s husband, who we call Baba which means Dad, is a veterinarian and when he returned home from work, he brought medicine for the puppy. I decided to name her Pendo, which means love in Swahili. I made her a collar and leash out of some African fabric I had tied onto my backpack and then made her a small bed out of a shallow bucket, some towels, and a blanket. I put the bucket on my bed on a towel and then I pulled my mosquito net over Pendo and me. I was truly exhausted last night. We went to bed around 8:00 but Pendo woke me around 11:30 as she peed on the sheets right by my feet. I was soo tired that I grabbed a towel, dried the sheets, and put a clean towel over it and went right back to bed. Then I was up with her again at 3:30 because she was crying because she was trying to get water from this bucket in my room but couldn’t reach it. I gave her water and then we slept until 6:30 this morning when the started licking my face. I took her outside to go to the bathroom and gave her and the other four dogs that we have daga for food and their flea/tick medicine.