It began with breakfast. Aissa wanted chocolate and only chocolate on her bread. She pushed and whined and reached and grabbed until I got her what she wanted. Immediately afterward, she began to pull off her dress, saying it was dirty. I tried to get her to wait until we were in the room rather than stripping down in the middle of the dining room, but nothing doing. She was naked in less than a few seconds.
I walked away from her, leaving her in the dining room. She had already begun to cry and then refused to return upstairs to our rooms. We couldn't leave her naked in the middle of the lobby, so I took her by the arm and pulled her to the stairs. At which point she collapsed into a heap, forcing me to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way. I took her into my room, but she wanted to go outside. I let her go outside, but she kept trying to run away. When we tried to restrain her she began to scream. A guest at the mission walked up to her to tell her “not to cry”… it didn’t help.
I then convinced her to go to the pool. She was so sleepy she almost slipped off my back and into the water. She didn’t make a sound, unlike yesterday when she wouldn’t stop chatting while splashing around.
After the pool, she felt somewhat better and after putting on dry clothes, we watched a video in my room. I tried every trick in the book to get her to take a nap, but she was having none of it. I even went so far as to put her on my back like the African mamas and try to rock her, but she absolutely would not snooze. My prayer went something like this “Please God, just 30 minutes, if she could sleep for just 30 minutes.” Over and over and over again…
However by this point she was happier. I let her go to play with her uncle for a while and she tolerated this well enough. She then came to me and asked to swim again. So for the second time that day, we headed to the pool. Halfway through our swim, she got hungry, and began to demand food.
We headed to lunch, but things went quickly downhill from there… She began to dip her bread in her orange juice, then stuff whole loaves into her glass. She wanted to drink the wine that was on the table. She demanded a sauce I didn’t think she would like and when I gave her some to taste-test threw a fit that I hadn’t covered her rice and got up from the table. She then ran away outside, and Jean went after her. He dragged her back into the dining room crying and screaming. As soon as he let her go, she slunk away again, sniffling and crying, heading for the parking lot. I followed with a plate of rice and her drink. The kitchen staff was wonderful. As soon as they saw what a difficult time we were having, they tried to ply her into the TV room for cartoons. It worked, and soon one of the ladies had Aissa propped on her lap, eating rice obediently from a spoon. Soon thereafter, Aissa transferred herself to my lap and continued to eat.
Aissa then proceeded to down a plate of rice, a loaf of bread, a potato, half a papaya and two glasses of orange juice. I had to run an errand and when I came back, I made my way to the TV room. Aissa fell out of the doorway, onto her hands and knees and began to cry. The girl was a mess, she was exhausted.
So I took her to my room and gave her a shower. We changed her dressing and rubbed her down with lotion. I turned on the air conditioning, hoping she might sleep…thus began World War III. I was determined she needed to rest, she was determined she was going outside to play. Every time she got out of bed, I put her back in, without a word. Perhaps she might get tired and give up? Nope. When I finally gave in and let her go outside, she promptly laid down on the cement walkway (naked I might add, because she refused to put on clothing) and fell fast asleep.
Sheesh.
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