C.E.F.O.R.E.A.

It was a long but fulfilling day today. We arrived back at the guesthouse at 9pm after twelve hours of service in the city. We spent the morning at C.E.F.O.R.E.A (Center for the Care of Abandoned Children) When we arrived there were fifty or more children (of all ages) waiting with mothers, grandmothers and caretakers to receive their only nutritious meal for the week. We are traveling with Pierre who used to be a part of this program until he came to the US for spinal corrective surgery and was adopted. He is greeted like a king in Kinshasa now. Many of the kids remember him and all admire him greatly. His grandmother “Coco” was the first to receive us. There were many welcoming hugs as we visited with the children while the ate. As they finished each family was sent home with small bags of fish, rice and cassava flour for the week. When lunch was over we began setting up our medical clinic to service the children in need. We never expected the townspeople to arrive and pretty soon we had a line of 40 or more patients waiting to be seen. We made priority for the orphans and got through as many in line as we could in a few hours. Today we saw a terrible case of rickets, intestinal worms, high fevers, several hernias and countless other ailments.