For some reason, when we booked rooms for six people, it didn't occur to any of the hotels to group the beds into four in one room and two in the other! Also, for some reason they kept giving us single beds instead of giant ones. We learned in Budongo how each chimp has their own nest at night, but the little ones sleep in the same nests with their mothers. My children empathize completely, and wish that the hotel designers had taken more advice from the chimpanzee guides!
The hotel in Masindi was fairly hotel-like, at least African style! It was a long block building with rooms off to the side, and we had two rooms next to each other, each one with a double bed and a single bed shoved in the corner, which qualified it as a "large room," although any potential large-ness had clearly been absorbed by the extra bed!
The first thing that happened was that Hibiscus collapsed on to a double bed and declared it all her own. We teachers call this "numeracy awareness"; the ability to look at a number of beds and a number of people and be aware that they are the same amount and no one person gets two beds to herself! As well as lacking numeracy awareness, Hibiscus is also lacking hotel-acy awareness. When we made her count the number of people and the number of pillows, she scoffed at our reasoning and ran into the other rooms, ordering all the extra people to sleep there! "Extra" meaning not herself and her sister, to whom she had also assigned a bed; the rest of us could fend for ourselves!
Despite her quick maneovering to get the best bed for herself, the logic of the three-bed-per-room situation was that Hibiscus had to end up in the least preferable position. I had to sleep in the double bed with Emerson, partly because I wanted to keep things as similar to our normal sleeping arrangements, and partly because he was being very clinging to me. He has done amazingly well with suddenly sharing all his mama-time with two very needy sisters, but I could tell he had about reached the end of his emotional rope by the time my parents arrived. I had promised him that he would be able to get some more special time with me once there was someone else to play with the girls, and he had been taking full advantage of that. I don't want to give him preference over the foster children, but if his needs can be met by making sure he sleeps near me and then he can stay balanced during the day, I think it's worth it for everyone. So I wasn't about to take away his proper sleeping place! Buttercup has been waking several times every night with a terrible cough, and no matter how much she liked playing with her new grandparents during the day, when children wake in the night they want familiarity, so I figured she had to be in the same room with me as well. That meant Hibiscus was the only move-able child, and we had to hope that her new infatuation with Gramma would mean she would be able to sleep away from me and her sister!
The last time we went on a trip, the girls did fine during the day but got very upset at night when they weren't in their newly-familiar beds, and I was a little bit braced for that happening again. When you have been displaced from your home and family several times, leaving home can be very scary. I tried to keep our routine the same, and whether it was feeling more internally balanced or trusting in our family or simply being exhausted, the children fell asleep pretty well. We all read books in Hibiscus's bed-to-be, because I figured that she would have the most difficult time acclimating. Then I took the other children to our room while Gramma quickly started in reading Hibiscus a "special big-girl" book. Emerson fell asleep quickly with a snuggle, but I noticed Buttercup's eyes kept following me in the dark! I had to stay in sight through the open bathroom door, and when I tried to duck back into the other room to get something, I heard the little pad-pad of pajama feet following me into the hallway! I took the hint and just went straight to bed.
After the first night, everyone settled into our new routine. Hibiscus started to really appreciate getting her special Gramma-book and didn't make any more fuss about going off to the other room. She quickly became bossy and warned the other children out -- "this one not room for you, go you's room!"
The other bandas had only single beds in our room, and Emerson was a little sulky about that. Actually, he mainly tried to convince me to sleep in his bed with him, which I did not find very tempting! The first night in the Budongo Forest he woke up to find me and the bathroom. I have never been in a night as completely dark as it was there! He couldn't find anything at all and started to cry until I managed to rescue him. The next night I put him down with a headlamp under his pillow, and we practiced turning it on and off. He woke up in the night and managed the whole bathroom trip all by himself, which made him very proud!
Hibiscus was very upset with me for assigning Buttercup a bed of her own. I know that they used to sleep together in a single bed, but I think in a couple months of copious bed-space they have both developed extraordinarily wiggly bed-habits, and I was pretty sure that Buttercup would end up squashed or pushed onto the floor! At home they sleep on a double mattress on the floor. One night, I picked Hibiscus up off the floor twice, and removed her from laying on her sister two more times!
I told Hibiscus that all the American children Buttercup's age sleep in their own bed, and she was shocked! Buttercup herself went to bed peacefully. After several nights I asked her how she felt about having her own bed, thinking that she might have enjoyed not being laid upon and squashed into a corner. But when I asked her if she liked having her own bed, she quickly shook her head no. I asked if she would rather sleep with Mama or Hibiscus, and she quickly agreed. I hope that one of these days I will have the chance to actually co-sleep with her. I think it would help our bonding, and I love sleeping with my children. So far, the needs of the older children haven't allowed it.... poor Little Miss Third-in-a-Row!
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