Karis

I really will make a concerted effort to be a better blogger! Just putting "Karis" as a title makes me realize how far behind I am her antics!

The two most recent developments are that she was pretty sick last week and she has started "school". Whether school contributed to the illness is up for discussion but we don't really think so! Basically she is going to nursery school a couple of days a week and really seems to enjoy it. I had been contemplating sending her a little anyway just for the chance to play with other kids and then I got a temporary teaching job and fired our housekeeper/nanny in the same week so that expedited the need to have a place to send her a few hours here and there! I do have a few concerns about the school but to be honest, I have concerns with all the schools here. Safety standards just are not what they are in the U.S. but there is a good ratio of adults to kids and they are all well supervised everytime I am there. She will definitely go at least three days a week for the next "term" which is April thu June because those will be days that I am teaching but I am not sure after that. The advantage of this school was that they were allowing us to pay by the day so it was pretty cost effective to just send her one or 2 days a week. Now we have to pay for full time. It is worth it while I am teaching but I am not sure after that. Also I have not replaced Mathilda in the house so I am not paying that salary. If we end up replacing her I can't afford or justify employing someone full time and send Karis to "School". However, the next few months are sorted out so I will worry about that later!

Meanwhile, karis was sick all last week with high fevers off and on, no appetite and diarrhea. Of course, if your intake for a solid week consisted of milk and avocado the latter can hardly be unexpected! We took her for a malaria smear on Weds after she actually had chills on tuesday night but it was negative. Still, the fevers continued so on Thursday we took her in for labwork and antibiotics. John of course had not been verbalizing much but had been ruling out various diagnoses all week. By Thursday he had narrowed it down to salmonella or typhoid (and I think those 2 are actually related to one another or even similar) She certainly had the symptoms for typhoid he read out of the medical book and we know she ate muffin batter with raw eggs and went swimming in lake malawi so certainly could have been exposed to goodness knows what! Unfortunately, they had a really hard time finding a vein in her chubby little arms and hands so even after 3 sticks did not get enough blood to really diagnose the problem but an injection of a broad spectrum antibiotic worked a miracle and she seemed to recover almost immediately! (did the sickness run its course or the antibiotic just work... who really knows!) We are just really thankful she is better!