Encounter with the law

The lowest point in my stay here, happened a few weeks back. Now for this one you need to sit back and relax, I hope you do relax because I'm really going to vent my frustrations and everything just to get it out of the way. I hope you understand that I need to do this because I'm not in a hurry to get cancer from having bad toxins build up in my body, I need to let it go.

Anyway so it's been about two months since we moved into our apartment and in the first few weeks everyone was trying to get used to the new environment and all. Mich in particular was excited about more space in the house and in the hall way. Once or twice he run out the door and got stuck between the two doors that lead out of the building. The good or bad thing about these doors is that once you get passed the first door going out, you can't make it back in the same direction without using the key. On these occasions we found him with someone in the apartment trying to explain where he was coming from.
On one of these occasions Sam found a lady trying to help him, a few days later he was confronted by some dude who accused him of having attitude towards his wife while she was trying to help Mich. Sam told him there was certainly some kind of misunderstanding because there is no way he would have attitude when some one was helping his son. The guy calls his wife and asks her if indeed Sam was the guy, she was a little embarrassed that her man had taken things that far.
When Sam told me I was really baffled because "Sam" and "attitude" can not be used in the same sentence. That was the end of that.

About two weeks after that I receive a call from a lady who says she is from DHS and that she was at my door to see me. I thought, DHS? what's that?, at my door? okay ... in my mind I'm thinking this lady is lost, is looking for someone, let me go and see if I can help her find her way or just tell her she got the wrong number.
I get to the front door and let this lady in, she is holding some files and then she states again that she is from DHS, still doesn't ring a bell. She asks me if I have a four year old son, I'm like well not exactly, he is three and a half. So she tells me how some anonymous person put in a complaint about a little boy who is left running in the hall way and gets trapped in between the doors while trying to make his way out, he is not attended and usually is left crying for over 45 minutes until someone passing by comes to his aid. The whole time I'm looking at this lady speechless, still trying to figure out what is going on. She asks me how old I am, tells me from just looking at me and our conversation I seem very intelligent ... aha??! (what is that supposed to mean?).
She then tells me she would like to see the little boy, at this point I thinking, oh oh! I'm in big trouble, I still can't get my words together to tell her it's crazy this whole thing. He is a little boy, he bound to get into stuff, Sam and I look after him the best we can, it's not like this happens everyday, we have hardly been in the apartment a month. I didn't say any of that, I was still taking the whole thing in and also trying to keep my cool and be polite, you know?! ... you don't? oh well that's life.
I'm hoping that this lady will figure out that Mich isn't in any kind of danger and that all is well.
She meets Mich who doesn't seem to mind the lady, she asks him questions and he answers them, and goes on with what he was doing.
So we sit down and the lady tells me like 5 horror stories of things that have happened to kids in Philly, yeah! like I needed to hear that.
I'm already feeling horrible that she had invaded my privacy and that some crazy person in the apartment had reported to DHS, which by the way stands for Department of Human Services.
She then writes some things on her papers and asks me to sign, to show she came to the premises and advised me. Honestly I don't remember when I last used the signature that I put on those papers but it certainly wasn't eligible by any standards.
But that is not the end, she had to make sure that there was enough food in the fridge, that there was running water in the toilet and that Mich had a room and bed to sleep on, talk about crazy stuff. By the way I'm not making this up, it actually happened, sad isn't it?!
Still, that was not the end of it, she said she couldn't make a decision, her supervisor was going to come by too, to assess the situation and make a verdict, but she thought the case would be closed.
I miss home, what ever happened to children running in the compound (safe area) and knowing that all is well and incase you miss something, the neighbour is sure to notice and help out or advise you if something is wrong?.

These people don't waste time, a week later I received a phone call from the "supervisor". I thought shoot!!! these guys just won't let this small incident go. The guy was nice on the phone, explained why he needed to come over, asked what time would be most convenient and said it would be nice if we were all at home. Before he hang up he asked me if I thought I needed parenting skills, I almost said WHAT??!!, but thought it wise to be a little polite, so I said no thank you. We made a date for that very evening, he later called to say that he didn't have a phone but that he would be at the door at 6:30pm.
At 6:30 I went to the door and he seemed to have been waiting a few minutes, that wasn't the worst of it. The guy was heavily built (not exactly short), marine crew hair cut and to crown it all he was in an army trouser with the boots too. I was humbled if you know what I mean.
Of course I fained a smile, meanwhile I'm trying to catch my breath, this was not what I expected to see. We get into the house and Mich was acting like he was on a sugar high, he couldn't sit still, he was really excited about having the guy in the house.
He was indeed a nice guy, he started by telling us how from the conversation we had on the phone and just walking into our home he didn't think it was necessary to waste his time and ours over this. (I'm beginning to think that they expected to find a woman high on something and whose speech isn't coherent). He acknowledged that kids have energy that they need to burn and that they do get into stuff. His conclusion was that, someone was just not amused about the little boy running around and put in his complaint.
He also had to write stuff down and said, well I'm closing this case and really don't see why the person who came here before me, didn't do just that, I almost said tell me about it.
Aaaah!!! the taste of raising a child in this individualistic environment. It's already hard as it is, I didn't need this because I honestly feel Sam and I are doing our best.

That was a really lousy experience, I have certainly learned my lesson to be more careful with Mich and extremely careful about the people around me. People have issues and you don't want to get in their way, but alas you will sometimes and you can get burned in the process. That is keeping me in check, I also know that God takes us through some of this rough patches for our own good, there is something to learn.

But you know?! even Joseph and Mary also had issues when Jesus went MIA on their journey back home from Jerusalem. They found him days later in the temple jazzing with the high priests. He is lucky it was then otherwise he would have been put in foster care or something, and Jo and Mary would have been labelled careless parents.

Family visit

Then a week after handover I had the beautiful privilege of hosting my brother Andrew, his wife Amanda, my niece Iridi and Sam's uncle Enock.

Andrew and his family live in Denmark while Uncle Enock lives in South Africa.


It was a wonderful reunion on many fronts, I hadn't seen them in about two years, they had never met Mich and Mich and Iridi were meeting for the first time too.

We had a wonderful week together, shopping, taking walks, eating out and going on the Duck tour phillyducks.

Mich and Iridi couldn't get over each other, there was constant fighting for toys and crying. The battles would start early in the morning when Mich excitedly run into her room to check if she was still there. (He didn't attend school that week because he had a bad cold)


The only time they were peaceful was when they were watching a cartoon, immediately after that it was battling again for this toy or that thing, if Iridi held something Mich wanted to have it.
It was all fun and laughter in the evening when the day was over and it was almost time for bed, then they would play, run around and laugh only to start the whole process all over the next day.

Friday night was real full house, that's when uncle Enock arrived, he is around for conference. We stayed up and talked for a bit and then turned in for the night.

Kids Club Handover

Hum hum humm!!! I know what you are thinking, 'girl, whatsup?, you have more time to your self now that Mich is in school and look, you haven't posted anything for a while, whats going on???'
I know, I know, well I will tell you all about it in bits and pieces. As usual the best place to start is at the beginning.

It's a new school year, well not so new anymore and with that comes handing over of responsibilities. So much of the past weeks have been about meetings, nominations and handing over files.
I was officer in charge of the Welcome Weekend, I couldn't have been given a better post because I had fun fun fun! I enjoyed working with the students and administration, late nights corresponding with prospective students with partners and kids and attending endless meetings but it was all good.
The first year moms are here so we threw a welcome party for families just so we could put faces to some of the names and chat a little bit. Then the next week or so we had a meeting, old officers describing their duties in the various posts and having the new members deciding which positions they were comfortable taking up.

All the post were taken up except mine, can you imagine?! I don't whether it's because I didn't do a good job selling my position or I sold it so well that they freaked out with how much time one had to put in. Unfortunately I can't carry the post two years in a row so by the time we met again, they had found someone. The lady seemed worried about taking on the task but I put her fears to rest when I told her I would be there to help out and that it's not nuclear physics or anything.

We ( the out going officers) had fun working as a team and decided it was only fitting to treat ourselves to a dinner while the guys took a turn looking after the kids.