Monday.........the babies

Hello again well how can I begin to tell you all about yet another fantastic day....it all began with visits to a couple of local homes. The first a home for disabled and the second for the elderly. We arranged a first aid trainimg course for the second which is booked for Wednesday. We also arrange a course for the guides on next Tuesday.

We then wemt to the babies home linked to the main childrens home, where they have 30 children from about one year old to 5 yr old. There are 6 staff but things are not as one would hope them to be. As we walked into the first room we gazed apon a tiny little girl sitting in her cot rocking. She is in fact 2 yrs old , she was a premature baby and quite frankly if it weren't for the fact that we later saw her walking I would have doubted her age. There are five cots in this small room, the windows are open and the ceiling fan operating but the heat still remains. One little girl is asleep in her cot with her legs sticking through the rails another is clearly a tinker, clutching an empty wrapper from a biscuit, she immediately called for us to pick her up, although not me as I am such a peculiar colour. Another said to 'have a fever' was laying in the cot. They had no toys. Anne who had delivered a tea chest full of baby toys only five weeks ago asked why they had none. She was told the babies bite and break the toys! One can only guess what has actually happened to them. We spent sometime with the little ones whilst through the grill on the window we could see the older children (3 to 5) ish being showered. They have a shower outside and one by one they present themselves at the water, have their entire body and hair (including their face) covered in a strong white lather, they do not complain at all, when clean they dry themselves on one of the towels laying around and collect their clothes from a stand, one t-shirt and a pair of shorts which they put on themselves. I have some photos but unfortunately this site will not let me upload any at the moment.

We then drove to the older children home where they were all attending their classes. They were very keen to show me their work and particularly their art. One little girl had made an image of a chicken using tissue paper stuck onto a background, they giggled when I imitated a chicken! Soon it was lunch time, all the children had changed from their uniforms and collected their own plate from their locker, they walked across the grounds to the canteen where they formed an orderly queue waiting for the food to be put in place. I found a plate and joined the queue which caused some puzzlement before they started laughing. I helped to serve the meal, which naturally did not appeal to me one little bit.

Time then for my pedicure. I can't tell you how difficult life is here!

Later we visited Independence Square before going to the sports shop to buy a volley ball, cricket bat and ball for the older children. They have a match coming up and apparently they are very good so fingers crossed!

We have some lovely pictures of us presenting the equipment to the boys, they will go on the website to help promote the work. So many other things to tell but no time to type it all. We had a great Chinese meal this evening and now sleep before work tomorrow. I am expexcted there for 9 in the morning.

XX