Britbird.

I've been home from Ghana for 5 weeks. I have to admit, I'm not the same person I was while there. Everyday I had this extra boost of life. I'm not sure if it was the amount of carbs in the food or the attention in the streets, given my skin color, but whatever it was has been sucked from me, since being home. The little boy in this picture was my temporary child for 100 days in a row. His name is Kingsley and he's now 11 months old. Kingsley has been in this orphanage since he was a newborn. His mother abandoned him and his sister to his father, who then brought both of them to the orphanage because he could not financially take care of them. Hopefully one day he will be able to take care of them or else I might return to Ghana and sign the adoption papers I started. 

Every morning since being home I have woken up feeling so down. This little boy, I spent every minute holding, feeding, sleeping, cuddling, and loving has been in my dreams every single night. I wake up so sad because I don't know how to fill that void of the love I had for him. I get sad because I don't know who is holding him and rocking him to sleep now. I cry because he is the happiest baby in the world and he has nothing. The first time I saw him he was playing with the cap of a water bottle. He played with that cap for 3 hours, and was perfectly content with that cap while crawling around on the cold ground. I picked him up off the ground and never let him back down in the 3.5 months of my time in that orphanage. As the weeks went on the children in the home even started calling him "Sister Brits son." 

Now I'm thousands of miles away and I don't know how to fill the hole in my heart. My heart literally aches when I see pictures of him and the other children who stole my heart. I keep trying keep myself busy, planning for the future, and babysitting as often as I can but all I want at the end of the night is to go back to Ghana, get this little boy, and keep him forever.