TZMama

That poem made my cry, thank you for sharing it. We are putting together a memorial book for the girls we just lost, and I will include it there. I'm so sorry for your loss.

I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your daughter - I recently became a mom and can't imagine that pain. My losses are very recent still, and I am struggling to get through the days. I am trying really hard to relearn to be happy, and these words were so helpful. Thank you.

Thanks Marty - I really do feel like the dutch boy in that story! Oddly enough, my (Dutch) grandmother was orphaned at 16 by the Holocaust and spent the rest of the war smuggling children and working with orphaned kids while on the run - my aunt just published a book about it (http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/02/holocaust-memoirs). Apparently going into this type of humanitarian work is common among "second generation" survivors. I am trying to get all the necessities done, but sometimes I just can't. Today I had to cancel a meeting with our architect and the kids couldn't go to school because the car situation still isn't figured out, and it was raining all night which means we can't get to their school without 4 wheel drive. It's been flooding for weeks here - thank god the girls' funerals and memorial were sunny and beautiful. I do have a wonderful therapist, too, who I see via Skype - I used to see her when I was a university student in Boston. I'll see her tonight if the internet cooperates - it's been randomly shutting on and off for the last week because of the rain. Oh, Tanzania, nothing can ever be simple here! Kay, thank you for supporting my position with the volunteers. My husband went to talk to them today, too - he is very involved in the organization and obviously knows better than anyone how much I'm struggling right now. Honestly, I am fine if they stay or if they go, I just don't have the energy to care about that right now. My condolences on the loss of your husband. I thought I knew what grief was like - the orphanage lost a baby when I first volunteered there, and it was terribly sad. But he was premature and very weak from birth, and we were prepared for the possibility. I also hadn't spent that much time with him, unfortunately, because everything was so busy at the orphanage at that time (we had another 6 babies under 6 months, all of whom are now healthy and happy three year olds). This was so, so different - I had bonded so deeply with those precious little girls. Grieving someone you truly knew, and had fallen in love with, and bonded with, and miss every day, is shockingly, wrenchingly different. I can't imagine losing a life partner. Heck, I really don't know if I'm strong enough for this.

Thank you both - I was so worried that no one would respond. I really have no outlets while I'm on the ground here, because everyone but my husband is basically my employee or a volunteer, so there's always something of a gap. Thank god, I'm actually heading to the US for another month after I finish my exams in England, and I'm going to do nothing but try to unwind with my family and introduce my kids to everyone. Unfortunately the fires that need to be put out never end - today another baby, Farajah, has pneumonia too, the 7 pilot house kids plus my two kids started at a new school, we almost couldn't get them there because of a car emergency, and two volunteers might be leaving because they think I haven't been welcoming enough. Tomorrow two staff leave for 3 days, and the day after a new staff person arrives - and I'm still weeks behind on all my other work because of the funerals. I'm trying really hard to keep it all together. Luckily our board really supports me. I just have to get through day to day because there are so many people relying on me, but all I want is to go to sleep. Weight is such a funny thing in this country - there are ads targeted to women for supplements to help them gain weight, and being skinny is a really bad thing, a reflection of poverty. So when you lose weight, everyone comments on it negatively - they worry. And when you gain weight, they're thrilled and comment on it as well, as a compliment - takes some getting used to. Easier to just stay at one weight. I also can't wait (weight) to get to England so I can buy new pants - literally the only place to get jeans in our area is at a huge crowded used clothes market, and I just can't face it. Pants that didn't fit me when I arrived here a year ago, now can be pulled right down over my hips. I'm sure eventually I will probably be grateful for the easy loss, but this is not how I want to do it. Can you tell me what your losses were, if you are comfortable doing so? Everyone here is supportive but I can't really talk about it freely, it helps a lot to have a space here.

I basically shattered 10 days ago (can it possibly be that long??) when I lost two babies under a year to virulent pneumonia, suddenly and extremely unexpectedly. I am a 26 year old who moved to Tanzania a year ago with my husband to adopt two children and serve as executive director of a nonprofit I founded that partners with a local orphanage and is creating a children's village for older kids aging out of orphanage care. Wow, that's a mouthful! Necessary background, I guess. I've known the children at the orphanage, and been intimately involved in their lives and care, for over 4 years now, and am one of two people (along with the local director, who has been doing this for longer than I've been alive), who are ultimately responsible for the care of the kids. All of our kids have lost their mothers, mostly through death in childbirth and occasionally through mental illness or abandonment. Two little girls died suddenly on April 24th and 26, who we'd been caring for for over 9 months. The first, Lulu, was perfectly healthy, happy, chubby, literally perfect, until the night before she died. She came in when she was 2 weeks old and her mom passed away from complications from a c - section, not unusual here. Most of our kids have at least some relatives who come visit, fathers, grandparents, something - not Lulu. She was literally the happiest child I had ever met, and I was so in love with her - I would fantasize about eventually adopting her as well some day, although I know that two kids is probably our limit for now! I loved that baby so much. She had had a raspy chest for about 3 days, and a fever, but the hospital we work with, which owns the orphanage (even though my organization pays for most of the operations!), kept giving her antibiotics and sending her back to the orphanage, and she was smiling and energetic. The doctors there mostly are not very well trained, but we don't really have a choice but to listen to them, at least unless a child gets worse. On Wednesday night they finally admitted her, and she got IV antibiotics, although it took them a while to find a vein since she was dehydrated. The other director knew and was planning to tell me so that we could bring her to a bigger referral hospital in the morning. She got rapidly worse overnight and died at 5:30 am the next morning. Hope had been extremely premature at birth, when her mother died and she came to the orphanage, and in and out of the hospital repeatedly with respiratory ailments, but she had made it to 9 months and had been gaining weight and strength steadily. In the west she would have been in a NICU for much longer, but we had trouble even getting permission to take her to pediatricians. Ugh. Anyway, she was admitted to the hospital at the same time as Lulu. We rushed her to the biggest and best equipped hospital in the country, a few hours away, and she was admitted to their pediatric ward, but she died almost exact 48 hours after Lulu passed. On its own, honestly, as much as we adored both girls, Hope's death alone would have been much easier to process and grieve, because we'd had time to prepare, she had been sick for a long time, and we did literally everything we could for her. Her funeral was beautiful, her father adored her and saw her frequently when she was alive, and knew and respected how much we loved her. Lulu was different. Her family had never come to visit her, and they blamed us for her death. Her funeral was awful, careless and rushed. She died so quickly that we don't know if she could have recovered with better treatment. I could have gotten her to another hospital if I'd known, but I had no idea it was any more than a mild fever and a cough until it was too late. And even with Hope, we knew it was possible, but I had no idea it could hurt this much. I'm in so much pain right now and I have no idea how to survive it - but I have to, because 6 staff, 5 volunteers, 10 board members, my husband, my two children, and 32 other kids are all depending on me. The rest of my family is on the other side of the world. OH, and, the reason I was so busy on the day before Lulu died that the other director didn't want to bother me? Trying to finish papers for my graduate degree - I have to leave for England in 20 days to take exams as well as turn in my dissertation in 4 days. And I can barely eat or sleep. I'd already lost some weight before this because of stress and overwork, but I'm now down at least 25 pounds. My husband is not happy, although I don't mind it, and I'm still definitely not underweight! I honestly don't know how to keep going day to day. And I am in this awful and strange position of having been responsible for them in some ways like a parent, but without a parent's rights, and without them in my life every single day, maybe every other day instead. Maybe something like what a recent step-parent might feel? I don't know. Anyway. Help? Someone? Lulu on top, Hope below