Kids and Animals

I'm going to try to put up some pictures. I haven't had much luck the last couple of tries. The animals are worth seeing. Of course, even the best pictures don't do them justice. Maybe they will be more likely to load if I only put up one or two at a time. Hmm...worth a try.

Lately, I've seen and heard some interesting stuff around kids. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for kids. Saturday on our way back from the park, we went past a mother with a little boy standing beside her. The boy had the big belly of that toddlers sometimes have, but it didn't look quite right. It had more the bloated look of malnutrition. I asked Mark if that was Kwashiorkor and he said that, yes, the further you get from Kampala, the more malnourished children there are. I've heard of it, I've read about it, but this is the first time I've seen malnutrition that severe.

Yesterday, one of Bry'Chell's classmate's, Joan, came over for the afternoon. She's been coming over fairly regularly on Sunday afternoons. I think she likes to watch movies on the computer. Unfortunately, I was working, so she wasn't able to watch a movie until I was ready to braid Bry'Chell's hair.

In the mean time, we had an interesting conversation. The question I remember best was--"Does the United States have a war in their country?" Both Bry'Chell and I were a little puzzled by the question, but for a child who has lived in northern Uganda, that a pretty important question. No, we assured her, the last time the US had a war in our country was the Civil War in the 1860s. That's not a question any American kid would think to ask, but for Joan, it's an important piece of information.