Starving!

As I write this post, I am holding a baby in my arms.  

 

 Her name is Solivia.  She is 20 months but she looks like she is less than a year old.  She is malnourished.   

 

We have begun caring for her during the day, trying to feed her every two hours.   Brenda feels that her life is in immediate risk if we do not intervene.  

She will not walk or even reach out.  She struggles to hold up her head.  She will sit up for a bit, but she starts make this pathetic whimper, like sitting is too much effort.  She wants to sleep all the time.  We are trying to keep her awake for longer periods so that she will get more appetite, eat more and get more nutrition.  I feel like I am torturing her by trying to keep the poor child awake!  She is really quite pathetic.  

We are going to take her for testing on Monday for testing to see why she is not gaining weight. 

She likes to listen to music.  She doesn’t like potatoes, she will eat posho and beans.  She will drink a bit of tea if it has a lot of sugar!  She is too weak to even begin to play with a toy.it really breaks your heart.

Solivia’s mother is one of five wives to the same man.  One reason she is malnourished is because the food is not always enough to go around for all the wives and children.  This a very common problem here in this area of Uganda – a man has multiple wives and cannot care for all of them and the children.

Please pray for Solivia.  Pray that she will gain an appetite.  Pray the tests will show us how to treat her.  Pray that we can make a difference in her entire family.   Pray we can share Christ’ love.

{About 20 minutes after writing this post, we decided we could not wait until Monday (today is Saturday) and Brenda and I drove the baby and mama to Jinja for testing.  That trip's post will come later .)