Hi everybody

You are family, so you get to share in the beauty and the warts and wrinkles. Just like your own family, except ours might have a few more kids. But the sweetness and the bitter alike. “The Bloom is off the rose.”

This is a horror story, but not quite. In fact, it turned out good – with a party.

Miss Chompo got sick again – violent convulsion/shock. It happened once three years ago, when she was four years old, actually, when her mother was dying of aids, but we had forgotten. She has been a normal healthy 2^rd grade school girl. Plays with dolls, doesn’t like worms and creepy crawlies.

A story that should be told: The cast are seven year old Miss Chompo, the unwilling and unwitting heroine, and her three orphan mates who saved her life.

Who was to think – that three orphans, 7 and 11 year olds, would save her life.

She had stopped breathing and was turning that terrible death color. No oxygen to the brain.

A story that should be told; quick action of young children. We adults foolishly assume kids are not that smart. But they are, thus the cast, or the actors, are four.

Sunday evening last week, bed time at nine o’clock, because tomorrow is a school day, it began.

She screamed – really a death scream – and oh dear, she vomited – like across the room – not normal, and went into total shock and lost allconsciousness, she went stiff, then floppy, like a rag doll.

She had collapsed on the floor and her bed mates in the dorm dragged her - carried her best as they could to the infirmary 20 meters away. Laid her out on the floor, stuck a pillow under her head, Miss Bai Mon, the eldest, said go get the nurse... but 7 year old Liw saw she was turning that terrible death color.

She grabbed the oxygen machine and dragging it over to Miss Chompo, plugging it in – turning the nobs and dials to ‘high – full bore’, pushing the vomit aside, out of her mouth, and sticking the oxygen in the sick girl’s mouth.

By this time – literally in less than three minutes, all the 37 girls were there. Miss Bai Por was the one who ran to get the nurse, knocked on his door – got all the other girls to scream loudly, so he heard their shouts and screams.

He came immediately, adjusted the oxygen, and phoned the driver to come immediately. He did – it took about 5 minutes because his house is nearby in the slums.

By that time, they’d propped her up in a wheel chair, and got her connected to a portable oxygen tank, and she was getting a bit of color back, the terrible death color was going away, and all the time the three girls kept holding her, crying – talking to her.

They thought it was food poisoning. Spoiled noodles for lunch. And it was the ‘duck’ noodles the girls really like, so they all ate lots.

Now they know - it was much more serious. Brain scans said there is a calcium ‘spot’ in her brain. But they are giving her medicine to dissolve it.

Miss Chompo finally did open her eyes an hour later in the emergency room – a nurse said that the young girls should not be there... and the kids just glared at her – and didn’t move an inch. No way would they leave their friend. Today, days later, she is back in school, they tell us there will be complete recovery.

Left to right: Liw, Bai Por, Chompoo, and Bai Mon.

So we carry on. Someone recently gave us a bunch of fabulous Swiss chocolate candy, and this was the perfect occasion. We had a small party last night after dinner. Miss Chompo and her three mates were ‘the sponsors’ giving chocolate to all the other girls.