Week 2

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Thursday 18th January

Well here we are again another week almost over, where is the time going to?

So much to tell you this time so I’m going to split it into different entries to make it easier reading. Let me think, where to start.

I’ve already told some of you what my room is like but for those of you who have yet to savour the delights here goes.

I share my room with Tina (Lisa has now returned to the UK and the comforts of home) and lots of multi-legged beasties including an array of lizards, cockroaches, HUGE spiders, slugs and anything else that happens to wonder in. The lizards are ok they don’t make any noise and what cockroaches we don’t kill with our MEGA ROACH KILLER SPRAY they eat and kindly leave the carcasses for us to find, they do however leave little poopoos about the place (not nice) which we have to clear up. The spiders have been huge (if I’ve fathomed out how to download photos then you will be able to see one example of said spiders) but the roach spray kills them too and as for the slugs they have taken residence in our continuously flooded bathroom, but if it wasn’t for things like this I wouldn’t have anything humorous to write about hahahahaha. We are sure that more wildlife lurks in the mattresses but we try not to think about that too much.

So have I painted a good enough picture for you?......Good, don’t worry I won’t go into what the kitchen looks like where our food is prepared, but we do share the table with a rather large family of red ants so I think that says it all!!!!!

Let’s move onto something else because I’m starting to itch…..More about the school I think. There are 4 dormitory blocks, older boys, Lost Boys, older girls and younger girls. It is the responsibility of the children to keep their dorms clean and they spend each afternoon sweeping the floors and at the weekends they clean each of the classrooms. I don’t think I have mentioned that the Home also has its own school which is probably good for the children, but lessons appear to be a bit hit and miss and for the month of January most afternoon lessons are scrapped and the children play sport!!!!

I wouldn’t say that the school is fully equipped as there is no science lab and so the teacher has to explain chemical reactions to the children, quite bazaar if you ask me and although they have some computers thy can’t use them because there is no electricity supply to that room!!!!!! Send Dad and Warren out here they’d soon have it fixed up lol. So the education is quite basic but some of the children have gone onto sixth form and university so most of these children do have a positive future and one of the volunteers that was here last summer is setting up a scholarship fund so there will be money available to buy equipment when they go onto higher education.

There are a number of street children here who don’t go to school because they have not had any formal education and because the school cannot facilitate special needs they help around the site doing odd jobs and helping with washing and general maintenance, from what I can make out they earn money this way and they are very helpful and happy.

All of the children eat in one huge building which floods in the monsoon so they are having extensive building done at the moment so that the dinning room and big boys’ dorm can be moved before the rains set in in March. They all eat with their hands here, which may not be to our western tastes but it is an art form and fascinating to watch. The food is wholesome and they get 3 good meals a day.

The Lost Boys, I’m sure you’ll all be glad to know, do have their own Wendy in the form of a House Mother and the more I have got to know them the brighter they have become, especially when I gave them a cricket bat and some sweets the other night, I think that was enough to light up their little faces lol. And some of them do go to school but again only those who have had previous schooling.

My little missiles live in a separate house about 5 minutes down the road, the younger school children (Years 1 & 2) also live there along with 4 very young ones. There are about 26 of them in total. They go back to their house at 12pm for lunch and a sleep and then some afternoons they watch ‘Scooby Doo’, he appears to be a favourite with a lot of the children here, even the Lost Boys love him.

It’s difficult here because they assume that because we are westerners that we are wealthy and they constantly ask for things which makes it very hard for us especially as Tina and I live here all the time, there really is no escaping. We have bought a few things for them, but the more you buy the more they want and it’s not just the children that ask!!!!!!!!

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