All Better
She is all better now.
Everything is back to normal except her appetite.
She still doesn't eat as well as she did before she got sick.
My boobs are as big as watermelons.
Lots of milk.
Could feed a village full of children.
Must cut down production.
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When they take blood here, the take it from the ear.
First, you have to rub the ear hard so the blood flow is stimulated.
Then, they prick the ear.
After that, the squeeze the hell out of it... which results in a very upset baby and a bruise(as in the picture below).
It reminded me of my elementary school where pinching a child's ear was the punishment of choice for kind teachers.
The baddies had all sorts other ways to torture us.
We had a dude nick named "Chuck Norris" at Saint Jo, the
name given to him for obvious reasons.
We had another teacher at Nativity Boys School A.K.A
Cathedral who used to conduct "ZAF Koreta" Sessions.
Those used to be his words for these punishment
session, I kid you not.
This consisted of hitting students on the back of their
knees with a cut-up garden hose thus making us the
productive, well-rounded citizens we are today.
Fo the Amaringa challenged folks, "Zaf Koreta" literally translates
into "tree Chopping"
does he really use the chuck norris chama tifi :)) i remember my brother use to call the spankings as charlie .
our amharic teacher use to have a leather jiraf .He called her mihiret .
yemi i am glad all is well and good .being a mother is mostly a joy and sometimes eda.
in the no-look back-slap. That's when he was pretending to
engage or talk to one student so that the target student
would not have his guards/senses up. Then slaaaaaaaaaap
and that's all she wrote. Shock n' awe baby.
counter measure. You had to be on your toes as he is
approaching and the hairs on the back of your neck had to
be able to anticipate the slaps as they are about to land
minimizing the damage.
But enough of this talk and hope Denbit does not have to
go through what we went through.
Did I tell you I went to Saint Jo for one summer? Yeah, they let girls in in the summer. One of the teachers had a habit of punishing the boys for what the girls did because he was "not used to beating girls". So, needless to say, we were well behaved. We didn't want anyone beat up because of us! Besides there would have been hell to pay after class.
Tiffany, yes, the ear hardly has any blood so they had to squeeze really hard! It was quiet ridiculous!
I'm glad the little one is doing much better. I hope her appetite has come back! :)
Thank you for posting your original and fresh perspectives, it is so refreshing to see how you handle the challenges of raising 2 children in a new country. I read one post and had to read them all!
You raise an important (SAD) issue, that mothers in 'developing' countries have a whole range of problems caring for their children that we never even think about.
Thank you,
Alem
it will worsen the fever. If her tempreture doesn't drop as fast as you wish after giving her tyelonol, give her sponge bath i.e use wet
wash cloth to wipe her body like our mothers used to do. It will drop her temprature till the tyelonl kicks in. I know how it feels when
your child get fever and you don't know the couse. Last year my son started to shoot fever in the middle of the night and even after
tylonl and sponge bath the fever didn't drop. He even had febrile seziure and you can imagine how distrubing it was for me and my
hubby. Now he is 3 year old health boy.
I can see Buchela learning Chinese so fast from his little school mates, and becoming the family translator on many occasions. He might even teach his little sister few words here and there, and before you know it, the two little kids will be speaking in Chinese when they do not want you and their Dad to understand what they are saying!
When my siblings and I were very young back home, my parents used to speak English in front of us the children when they did not want us to understand what they were saying. But that was short lived as we learned some English in school and from movies. We definitely could understand what they were saying even if we did not speak the language fluently yet. The lesson .... you and your husband have to learn Chinese soon so Buchela and Dinbit will not use it against you for some united sibling mischief at the parents' expense :-). I am sure great blog posts will come out of that though it might not be fun for you and your husband.
Enjoyed the "Zaf Koreta" comment posted earlier. Trip down on memory lane indeed! I too am a Cathedral alum, and those nuns and teachers also had very cruel and unusual punishments for the girls! I found out later on in life that was a running theme in just about any Catholic Schools even in other countries after talking to some of my friends here in the US who also went to Catholic schools in their respective countries. I also attended summer schools at St. Jo with my brothers, and clearly remember a wooden panel affectionately named "Charlie" some of our teachers used BOTH on the girls and the boys to whip our butts! That was better than one male math teacher who always showed up drunk oozing alcohol through his pores wanting to pinch girls on their thighs for all the wrong answers they got in math problems. I bet you they still do the same things now! God forbid.... Very little changes in these schools.
Hope Dinbit continues to do better, has regained her appetite as well, and you all are enjoying Olympics fever on the ground. I would have given my left kidney for the privilege of attending the Opening Ceremony at the Olympic stadium. That must have been one hell of an experience! I knew the Chinese were going to pull some serious stunt for their world coming out party, and mission accomplished. I am impressed from here to Timbuktu!
I wish you all great rest of the summer.
I had neer heard of such way of taking blood... It sounds very rough!
I am glad this bit is over!
Wishing you all the best and health in the world,
Best wishes
Claire
Claire@expatwomen.com
She is all good now. Eating well and sleeping a little better.
Gifti, yup, Buchela and his sister would definitely pull one on us for sure! If we stay here, they will sure be fluent in Chinese and we will still be on the stupid side of things!
Clair, I have never heard of such a thing either... They had to squeeze her ear so hard that they bruised her. Oh and why not use the ear lobe if they are going to do the ear? no no... the driest part of the ear instead. It is crazy!