In the meanwhile of all my business in Abuja, life in the village for Catherine and Amos has been equally if not more busy. The meetings, appointments and scenarios they have been dealing with could be comedic if from a film, however not so fun at the times they have been happening.
Catherine and Amos have daily met with Eze’s, Tribal Leaders and Church Leaders who have all brought forth cases of vulnerable children to be considered for our program. It has taken time to go through each one of them, do some investigating, considering, discussing and decision-making. We initially posted (on here maybe and our FB page) that we had 7 children, possible two more all coming in. Well as this is Nigeria, Africa and things operate on a completely different time line…we have waited, discussed and considered each situation as it unfolds.
Catherine and Amos did paperwork and have accepted two children to live permanently in the home. We also have a third child who has been processed and will be coming still, it is just a matter of time for him to be collected by members of the extended family as he is not close to where we are. We have expected him at anytime and we hear it may be soon finally.
There was also paperwork processed and signed for two other children and they came to stay in the house, after two days and one night…issues arrived with the relative and it was brought back up to discussion with the Eze and it was in our best interest to hand the children back over to the relative. We are not here to fight for custody of children, we are here with open arms to take them when there is no one else. There was also a second situation of two children whom we were processing to come in and a similar issue arose. It seems that some people here think they can bring their kids here, tell us they want help and us to take care of the children, but expect us to pay them money for us to keep the children. We have needed to clear that up, hence these four children specifically not staying with us now.
On that note however, a little story about the two children who came to stay for one night…
It was a five year old girl and a three year old boy who were basically feral. That word makes so much sense here, all our kids fall under that word, but the severity varies. These two were extremely feral. They basically threw food everywhere, peed and pooped on the floors, threatened to find the knives in the house and kill everyone while they were sleeping, fell out of bed at night, hit, screamed, bit, attacked with their full body force, tried to “kill” the stuffed toys… and basically exhausted Catherine and Amos completely. So it was a bit of a relief I am sure that God did not intend for those two to stay in this house :)
