HIDDEN MALARIA, THE SILENT KILLER On April 30th, I am doing my nor­mal morn­ing health checks on the 35 lit­tle chil­dren in our care, when I notice that Cre­cen­cia, 2 years old, has no ener­gy. Upon ques­tion­ing the moth­ers, they stat­ed that she lost her appetite a few days ago, but was now eat­ing bet­ter, but not like she should be. She had no fever or signs of sick­ness, but looked “flat” with no ener­gy or desire to play, and her eyes were dull look­ing. (At typ­i­cal malar­ia sign we call “malar­ia eyes”.)  Check­ing the inside of the eye­lids is one way to get a rough idea of a person’s blood count. The inner eye­lid should be red if the blood count is nor­mal. If only pink or blanched out white, this per­son has seri­ous ane­mia.   Crecencia’s eye­lids were bare­ly pink. A quick call to our Doc­tor, and we were on our way to his con­sult­ing room. A quick fin­ger-stick malar­ia test showed neg­a­tive at first, but after 20 min­utes BECAME POSITIVE. Anoth­er case of malar­ia with­out symp­toms, which can lead to death via ane­mia if not treated.

Cre­cen­cia, 2 years old, and her cam­era-hog house­mate, Juma, 1 day after malar­ia treat­ment started.

We start­ed Cre­cen­cia on anti-malar­ia med­ica­tion imme­di­ate­ly, as well as an appetite stim­u­lant. Because she is a tod­dler, she can take the oral treat­ment, thus doesn’t need hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, PTL!   Thanks to this quick catch, Cre­cen­cia was feel­ing much bet­ter on Wednes­day, May 1st. She is still weak from the ane­mia, but not as “flat look­ing” as she was on Tues­day. The ane­mia must be cor­rect­ed via diet and vit­a­mins, all of which she is get­ting to speed her recov­ery. Ane­mia can take up to 30 days to cor­rect with prop­er nutri­tion, so please keep this lit­tle girl in your prayers. She was recov­er­ing from mal­nu­tri­tion before the malar­ia hit, so this is nasty set­back for her.

YOUNG MEN WHO BECAME TEACHERS AFTER GROWING UP IN OUR MISSION, ARE A GREAT SUCCESS Helder and Alferes are local super­stars as they have proven to be great teach­ers to the lit­tle ones in the vil­lages they teach in.Helder is teach­ing 3rd grade in a vil­lage about 10km/6 miles from Bala­ma. Alferes teach­es the 1st graders in a very remote vil­lage about 35km/21 miles from Balama.

School teach­ers Alferes, left and Helder on right.

Both young men were in Bala­ma on May 1st for the big cel­e­bra­tion of Nation­al Work­ers Day, so we blessed them with fresh beans and a bag of rice as our thanks for their ser­vice. These 2 men are the first of our orphans who grad­u­at­ed from a pro­fes­sion­al school after com­plet­ing High School in Bala­ma. BLESSINGS, BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE AND THE BALAMA STAFF