Cleaningday

Saturday, the cleaning day.

This morning we wake up really early with noise of children. Today it’s the big cleaning day were all the godchildren get their allowance. Some are here early because it’s the highlight of the week. Within a couple of hours it’s around 60 children sweeping and cleaning everything in the garden that needs to be removed. Some are more enthusiastic about it and some are disturbed by some white people. We was introduced to one of our godchildren; Jessie. He got his first allowance today and we could see he was proud.
We are waiting to go with Mr. EmEm to visit some more godchildren in the close neighborhood. Today it’s sun and it’s already hot; 34 dgr. People around are occupied with all sorts of activities, from cleaning pigs in the river to harvesting rice on the nearby fields.
All together what’s impresses us more is the noise level. In our countries we would have raised our voices more than once to calm the numerous children. Here it’s like a normal unspoken agreement that you don’t speak up before you are told to. They may be poor but a great respect is built in from the birth.
After an hour or so we got the feeling like monkeys in a zoo. We are the main attraction and every sudden move or strange phrase in Norwegian are laugh at. I think we shall release monkeys and other animals from zoo’s. And I think we should stop looking at people with white hear or no hear like if they were from out of space. But all together we enjoy the excitement in the children. You can tell they are proud having an unique chance to be able to go to school. And some speak really good English.

One big disappointment though; This district are so poor that there are no bars or restaurants having TV showing Man.Utd-Liverpool. So I will try to force the internetcafe to stay open until late (23.30) so I can watch the game over some streamed channel. So if not somebody out there have to be prepared to text me (sms) every 10 minutes with match report and the goals in addition! Be prepared folks!

Berit and Alf

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Part of trip: Mindanao, Philipines

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