Toto Emily

This is Emily, our youngest girl at the rescue center. She is just darling, 4 or 5 years old. Like any kid, she will have a beautiful dress on, and within minutes it is destroyed with dust and dirt, but doesn’t take a notice to it. She mostly plays with the small boys, who are very rough and dirty, but there are always laughs and giggles, and Swahili words that I don’t understand! Her English has gotten tremendously better since I got here in September; she is a bright girl, learning quickly. When I see Emily, I see light and love, she is a true joy to have around. Sometime I forget about the environment she is growing up in because she is so happy. It is hard for me to know these kids don’t have mothers and fathers to continuously care for them, but they care for each other very well.

Last week I had the opportunity to be Emily’s mother, and I was not quite ready for the task! She was playing with the other 2 small boys, Karioke and Brian and I am pretty sure one of them pushed her, though they won’t admit to it! And she fell hard, so hard that her front tooth was nearly knocked out. Blood, screaming, crying, pain. Ahhh it was a horrible sight, and I was the only one around to care for her. I ran to pick her up, blood pouring out of her mouth, and took her into the office to clean it up. Flashbacks of my own teeth being pulled out came to mind (thank you mrs march!), and I remembered the pain and agony of that, not an enjoyable time. So I tried to be very gentle with her but she did not want me touching her mouth one bit. Her limited English did not help my cause either. Finally I was able to get a good look at her mouth, and immediately started freaking out, it was a permanent front tooth that was hanging on by the root. That is why she was in so much pain. Getting a bit nauseas myself, not handling the blood and the idea of a permanent tooth falling out, I just rocked her until she stopped crying so I didn’t have to make any major actions. By this time it had caused quite the scene, and the cook was told to come and yank the dangling tooth. As soon as he walked in with a rubber glove Emily was hysterical again. Not giving much thought to it, he pinned her down and jerked the tooth out. Simple and quick. Oh but she was not happy. We gave her a drink of water and a pain killer, but she wouldn’t allow a cotton swab or anything to clean her mouth up.

With the combination of the painkiller, crying and being rocked, she fell right asleep and I took her to bed. At this point we had examined the tooth and decided that it was NOT an adult tooth. PHEW! She was too young and had just lost her other front tooth in a playing accident so this one was bound to come out soon. That was a huge relief for me, I had no idea what to do about a lost adult tooth, but a baby tooth was no problem at all!

Unfortunately, the tooth fairy does not visit Kenya so there was nothing exciting to wake up to the next day. But she was totally fine and proud to show off her new gap to me in the morning! Who would have known what had happened the night before. It was quite the experience for me, I guess for those of you who are teachers you have similar experiences of dealing with such trauma and not always knowing how to handle it.

It’s always an adventure here, living with 140 kids, many issues come up! It is fun for me, but I am definitely still not equipped to be a mother of 140. One more lesson to check off my list!
love to you all!