Zoo in Uganda

Hi Friends-Sorry it has taken me so long to blog. I haven't told you that in one of the airports I was in ( we think Heathrow) I lost a black bag that has every cord that I own to all my electronics that need to be charged. Everything,,,telephone, computer, camera, kindle.....so we are having to be very creative with the borrowed cords that I have been able to get for telephone and computer. Let's add to the problem that between our one bedroom and bathroom there is just one double outlet. A fan stays permanently plugged into one of them and the other ONE is used for everything else. Then we have random power outages here that happen anytime day or night for any length of time. So......sometimes it is hard to write. 
   I was going to share a little about what Uganda is like for the natives of this area as well as for us but I will save that for another time. 
  I want to clarify something for everyone in case some of you think I don't know my child's name. Erik is actually named Derrick. Steve and I really preferred Erik as opposed to his given name. So we decided to call him Erik when we got back to the US. However, now that we have spent time with him we think it will be really hard to call him that for many reasons. First of all, Edith calls him 
"Derrickey" and we have started calling him that as well. He also just fits his name. So as of now we think we will keep his given name of Derrick.  I just have to get another bookbag with Derrick monogrammed instead of Erik.  Oh well...
   We are keeping Edith and Derrick's brother Edrine, age 6, until Monday. We took them all to the zoo. Steve, myself, Moses (driver) Edith, Derrick and Edrine. We were a zoo before we even got there.

The Entebbe Zoo is very small with limited animals but it was really nice to be able to walk around and see the animals. The chimps definately stole the show. Moses, an African, had never seen chimps or a lion. He was thrilled. Derrick probably had the most fun of all. He loved all the animals and got so excited when he saw the chimps running around fighting with one another. There was a family of monkeys (long tailed) that were free to roam the zoo and they followed us around. We got as close as two feet to them and they just let us look and take pictures. Steve got great video of them.  They were like the deer in Tanglewood-completely unaffected by humans. 
  After a long morning walking around we ate lunch at the zoo restaurant at Lake Victoria. We asked the gentleman if they had food appropriate for children and he said yes we have "fish and chips or chicken and chips." So we went in thinking chicken fingers. Jokes on us.

I spent my lunchtime picking out the bones so the kids could eat. 

We had a great time and were really glad we went. 

After the zoo we came home and the kids really enjoyed playing with one another. They both really love Edrine. They call him Eddie. We had dinner and then bath. The next few moments are what I really want to share with you. The kids tend to get silly and play around after bath. We were acting silly with them and hugging and playing around. I kept noticing Edrine sorta watch us. He participated in the silly part but not the other. We joined hands to say our prayer before bed and he held my hand. He didn't let go when the prayer was over. Derrick got upset because he wanted all three of them to sleep together in the same bed. This is what they had been doing before the kids came to be with us. The bed isn't big enough and Edith was willing to sleep in the other twin bed. We put them to bed and proceeded to kiss them all goodnight. When I leaned down to kiss Edrine he said to me "I love you mum." and then to Steve.."I love you dad". We both walked out of there stunned and extremely heavy hearted. He will continue to live with Abbey, the gentleman who has been caring for all three kids. He is willing to keep Edrine until he can find a family so he won't have to go back to the orphanage. He is an extremely sweet natured child and they all three really love each other. I can't even imagine what he must be thinking watching his brother and sister put their pajamas on and clean clothes. He came to us in a pair of jeans and tennis shoes that were way too big. We brought him some clothes from home but unfortunately most of them were too big. I didn't realize how thin he is. He speaks some english but mostly llugandan so communicating with him about what he is thinking is quite hard. We knew it would be hard for the kids to leave their brother. And it now has made it really hard for us to leave him here. We are not able to have three but if any one is reading this that would be interested in Edrine he could use a loving home.

  Tomorrow we head to Gbaba Community Church to worship in a traditional African worship service.