It's been more than three years since my first trip down to Cochabamba and over that time I've gotten to know many wonderful kids.
Some of those kids have moved on to join families all over the world, some of them have been adopted by families in Coch or by staff members of CDA, and some kids are still here with us in one of our four 'hogares'.
During my second trip to Cochabamba, there was a
Scabies outbreak at the baby home. If you don't know much about scabies, I'll just go ahead and tell you that it's miserable and very difficult to get rid of!
At this point I was living at Casa Dos, the big kids home and we were somehow saved from getting the plague!
One day, during the epidemic, Jennifer was telling the volunteers about a new baby that had arrived and how a family from our church had offered to foster the baby for a while so that she wasn't introduced to the scabies. It was a good temporary situation while the staff and volunteers were working to get rid of the
contagious skin infection.
After hearing the story I told Jen that if anymore babies arrived and needed a place, I would be happy to foster one at the big kids house for a week or two. I figured it would be good for the older kids to have a baby around, and they could even help take care of him. (I also assumed it would be about a two week stay at the most!)
The next day, I got a call from Jennifer asking if I had been serious about my offer to foster a baby, because she had one for me. That afternoon, Three-month-old "E" arrived, and he stayed with us at Casa Dos for 6 weeks!
"E" went everywhere with me! Church, choir practice, Bible study, Spanish school, not to mention all of my CDA shifts!
There were a lot of bottles, a lot of diapers and a lot of sleepless nights. It was a completely new experience for me, to be entirely in charge of a tiny human being!
I had to take "E" to the baby home once the scabies were gone. I wanted to keep him with me, but there were several reasons why that wasn't best. For one, I wasn't going to be in Bolivia forever, and the longer I spent 'mothering' this baby, the harder it would be on both of us when I left. He was also (in a way) getting spoiled. He had my undivided attention at all times and the sad truth was that eventually he would move into the baby home, which is arguably the best baby home in the city, but still could never compare to the love and care of a parent.
Finally, it wouldn't have been fair to the older kids at Casa Dos for me to keep "E" any longer. I was living with the big kids and still working my shifts, but all of my extra time was going to this little one, which wasn't a bad thing, but I had made a commitment to work with the older kids and I wasn't able to do everything I wanted with them when the majority of my time was going to infant care!
I LOVED having "E" with me. When I left in 2011, "E" was set to be adopted but like so many cases, it fell through. "E", my baby is still with CDA and it's amazing to see how he's changed and grown over these three years.
....to be continued
