Hi it’s Abi...
This morning there was another thunderstorm, but as I have been so tired because of all the energy I am using, I slept through it again (much to my annoyance). Also for the first time since we arrived we were not woken by the ritual chanting! (During the orthodox church season of fasting, the faithful are called to prayer by their priests chanting scriptures over a loud speaker from 4 am!!!) Mum, who had complained about it on the first morning, actually woke up feeling quite upset and moaning that it was too quiet!
We were eventually all up and making our way down to the main road; thankfully today there were more buses running. The mad rush for seats was somewhat quieter, yet it seems that our idea of queuing doesn’t work here.
We were back at Little AHOPE in the morning and as it was raining slightly when we arrived all the children were sat inside waiting for an early snack. The babies were crawling around and I ended up with one on my lap finding my hair fascinating as I don’t have it braided like all the girls out here. David was sitting on the floor becoming a human climbing frame for about 5 children so I left him to it.
The American girl was there again teaching another story with songs, questions and prizes. Again all the children wanted toys rather than chocolate and even the boys didn’t care if the toys were bracelets; they just wanted something that was theirs. We all got taught our numbers up to 10 in Amharic by children ranging between the ages of 6 and 11; admittedly we still aren’t very good after about number 6.
Today the kids had a special treat. The American girl had brought face paint so we had a queue of children waiting to have the design they had chosen. For some kids we ended up with a purple and blue tiger as we didn’t have the right colours but they loved them anyway. Some boys washed their pirates and tigers off once they realised there were better designs in the book that they hadn’t see like “spiderman” and “batman”. Again we didn’t have the right colours so we had a pink and blue “spiderman” and a purple or pink “batman!”
In the afternoon we were back at Big AHOPE to do some sewing in the guesthouse. Today we decided to pick the children up and walk with them down to the guesthouse so we had a group of children to teach. They were making a decoration to hang on their beds made up of two hearts sewn together with their name on one side and ‘JESUS LOVES ME’ on the other. They were all finished within the two hours and seemed to enjoy themselves; the boys were also better at sewing this time. David didn’t take part, his excuse was that he ‘didn’t want to waste our materials’, so sat there drinking coffee out of a small cup with 4 sugars in it.!
As we arrived back at the taxi rank we said goodbye to the kids. I told a couple of the girls that I would see them on Monday as we were going to do another project with them. A man in a butcher stall behind where we were standing over heard me and told me that he would ‘See me on Wednesday’ (ie tomorrow!). He looked quite downhearted in a cheeky way when I replied to him ‘err NO’. I think that must have been about the 16th man to tell me he loves me since I arrived. It is getting quite funny as whenever I say hello to someone they turn around saying ‘come with me’.
We are going to be leading the kids club tomorrow at the MKC church so it is another early morning and a busy day.
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