Gift in the Night

Here is a journal entry I wrote this morning recounting the exciting events of last night:
"So, last night we’re all sitting around waiting for the “Caucau” and learning Kakua when Mama Udita comes bursting out the door and starts shouting at the older boys sitting with us. She’s not speaking English, so we don’t know what she’s saying, but she’s motioning towards the gate and sounding urgent. The boys start getting up out of their chairs and heading towards the gate. One of the boys, Arch-Angelo, I think it was, fills us in on what’s going on. “She says that there is a baby crying at the door. Someone has left it there.”
We all jump out of our chairs and start rushing towards the gate, where the rest of the crowd of children who are still up at 11:30 are heading. We all crowd the gate and peek over eachother’s heads to get a glimpse of the baby crying. Jennie and Mama Michele (the base founder) push through and Susan (a visiting YWAMer) arrives with her camera and starts filming as Mama Michele takes the mystery baby in her arms and brings it through the gate. We all crowd the doorway to our little camping area/ previous classroom where we have a few plastic chairs set out between our tents. Mama Michelle brings the baby in to sit and rock it till it stops crying. The other Mamas and Sudanese leaders are concerned with involving the police and are in a hurry to get to the police station, so they rush off to make a report.
We all sit and stand around the baby and discuss who it’s mother could be. Michele assumes the baby is a girl and starts throwing out some ideas of possible moms. One 19 year old girl who has been by the center to ask for formula before, another woman named Elisabeth… but after checking under the “nappy” as Michele calls it, we discover that this little one is no girl. So our little midnight addition to the family really is a mystery baby, abandoned on the doorstep with no traces to family, wrapped up in a bunch of cloth pieces and laying in a plastic washbasin, completed with a bottle and canteen of watery formula.
This little guy appears to be pretty malnourished. He looks around three months old but has the face of an aged little man. His legs are skinny and bowlegged, but with the tiniest, cutest, newborn-looking toes you have ever seen. Someone asks how they’ll pick a name. Josiah is suggested and it instantly sticks. Each child here has two names, one fairly western sounding name, and one in the native language. Michele asks what “gift” is in Kakua, and we arrive at “ ‘doga ” for his second name. Little Josiah ‘Doga, our present in the middle of the night, the day before New Years Eve. Wow, how cool."