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jessiewre · 4 years

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Day 31

Tues 4th Feb

Two spanish omelettes were consumed in record time as we aimed for our agreed meeting time of 8:45am at Soft Power.

Leaving our camp at 8:42 was a bad start.

Thankfully we found a boda straight away and we were only 4 minutes late and Agre was chilled, getting himself a rollex for breakfast. He took us into the office for a brief intro to other staff, tried (unsuccessfully) to locate a pen for us to sign the paperwork, and then we walked round to the local pre-school we would spend the morning. The school had 3-6 year olds and there were normally about 90 a day but Agre explained that the holidays had just finished and many kids were still in ‘holiday mode’ so just hadn't turned up. Wouldn’t mind taking on that approach whenever I got back from a holiday, ‘Sorry boss, I’m still in holiday mode so I’ll see you when I’m ready yeah’.

As it was many of the children's first day at school, there were some kids who looked rather apprehensive and teary. Same as in the UK then! However, I have to say that the parents looked extremely chilled out and relaxed about the whole thing - maybe slightly different on that side of things.

There was one kid called Caesar who looked like the world was ending.

And as soon as one would cry, another one would remember that they were sad too and start crying. The kids had to remove shoes before going inside and Caesar stood balling his eyes out while two of us tried to get his shoes off. It was comedic and heart-wrenching at the same time, and Agre told us that in between his tears, Caesar was saying in the local llanguage 'I WANA GO TO SCHOOL! I WANA GO TO SCHOOL!'. Which made no sense at all.

All the kids were told to wash their hands using an ingenious contraption of an old container tied up with a hole in, then tied to a stick on the floor to create a sort of pedal to tip the water out, and all the toilets were hole in the ground cubicles. Proper toilets with seats are a unnecessary luxury I guess.

The lessons were quite casual as it was still only the 2nd day of term and first up, the teacher got a box of toys and emptied them onto the floor for some play. Most of the toys were basic plastic Happy Meal rejects as far as I could see, with the odd doll in there. Lots of the toys were broken so didn't even work properly. But the 45 kids all took something and played, no arguments about who had what or what was available. I sweat there was not a whiff of a spoilt child here.

Lots of the kids played with their friends and some of them were keen to play with us so we got involved while trying to involve and distract some of the sad kids. Phil had Caesar looking extremely glum sat next to him, crying on and off throughout as he forgot he was sad and then remembered again.

After this was playtime outside and the kids went WILD. There was a slide that the kids FLEW down at high speed and sometimes they would land so awkwardly in the dry mud that I was sure they'd cry - but no. Honestly they are so much tougher than muzungu kids! From what we have seen, they seem to be brought up with a lot more freedom with no mollycoddling meaning they seem stronger and more independent. They are way more physically confident and tough - naturally this means it takes more for them to complain. I'm not saying it's definitely better, but its interesting as the kids are so different. I’m generalising massively and only talking about our own experiences, but we have not seen one African child have a tantrum since we got to Africa, and there are children EVERYWHERE you look. The only children we've seen having a tantrum have been muzungu and it stuck out like a sore thumb.

I am only sharing what I am observing and I am not saying that I won't also have a tantruming muzungu child. Obviously I will. It's going to be a little twat I'm sure. But I like to think that these experiences will serve as a constant reminder to us that spoiling children is actually spoiling children, and that we must let children fall over in the mud without immediately scooping them up & encouraging tears. Let them see if it even hurts before we tell them it should. Its not about saying you need to like in a shed in poverty to have nice children, but spoiling children does them absolutely no favours at all. And also, kids want the simple things and can make fun out of ANYTHING if given the chance. If they are used to getting whatever they want whenever they want, they will probably be twats when they grow up, and who wants a twat kid? I certainly don’t. Mum & Dad if you are reading this and wondering how you ended up with 3 twat kids then I really don’t know what to say apart from I’m sorry 😂😂😂.

We went down the slide with some of the younger kids a few times and Phil went to the swings. Even Caesar had a go, though it was hard to tell if he was enjoying himself or not.

In the final class, the teacher asked the children if anyone wanted to start off a song for the visitors. Quite a few kids put their hand up, then the teacher would choose one who would stand up shyly and look at us, then begin to sing. The class would join in and it was sooooo cute. Then everyone sang songs with the teacher about numbers. Everytime someone did something good, they would stand up and put their hands on their hips while dancing side to side and everyone would sing together ‘Lovely, lovely and nice!’. Ok its probably hard to imagine it, but hopefully we got a video of it somewhere and I’ll share it! It was too cute.

One child found the whole thing all too overwhelming and I saw that she was completely falling asleep while sat up cross legged. I told one of the teachers who grabbed her a little mat and let her sleep at the back of the room. First day at school is tough eh.

Some of the children were so keen to sit with us and a little clingy that I worried about us leaving at the end and them feeling abandoned the next day. But I needn’t have worried as most of them walked straight off when the day finished at 12:30, not even a glance behind them. One kid was putting his shoes on all fine, but the moment he spotted his sister at the gate he remembered he was sad and began to cry and try to put his shoes on super fast, which did not work.

It was only 3 hours and we didn’t really do much to help compared to what other volunteers would have achieved with the charity, but we donated $30 each and will definitely donate more in the future. I could really see where the money was going and how much had been achieved already. If anyone has any doubts about giving money to charity, then give to this one as I can vouch for it!

We got a boda back to the hotel as the rain was due any minute and agreed to meet at 3pm to head to another site for another few hours of volunteering.

We were meant to pack up our things ready for check out but luckily the hotel said we could eat before packing up our room - so we went to Black Lantern for tomato soup with garlic bun, and cheese tomato toasties. The rain went crazy and we called Agre who confirmed that it would be too tricky to get to the volunteering ‪at 3pm‬. But as our money was super low (mysteriously), Phil had to go and get our dollars and bumped into Jimi on the way. They returned to BL and Phil was like Wait till you hear this Jess.

Jimi then told me what had happened to him the night before when he'd left us.

He was walking home and was not far when he heard a strange noise. He moved closer to the noise and it sounded like crying. He then found a BABY less than a year old in a sheet, abandoned on the side of the road near a bush. He took it to a police station and they took it in. The next morning, he heard about a lady in the village who was shouting that her baby was missing and was desperately searching. He went to find her and they went to the police station and then the hospital together and she was reunited with her baby girl, Alice. Turns out there was a robbery in her home and they took lots of stuff and the baby too but then just left it on the roadside.

Jimi was a little in shock you could tell. Such a crazy story.

We went back to the our camp to finally check out of our room ‪at 4pm‬ oops and Phil was straight into the pool, where a frog soon joined him for a swim.

We got bodas into town with Jimi and I told him we wanted to go a sports shop. We’d learnt from him that he had started a youth coaching club himself called Castillo. Castillo was partly set up also by Jimi’s late brother Abel who tragically passed away from cancer a few years ago and the aim was to help vulnerable children and give them more purpose, strength and confidence.

So we offered to buy some items to help out.

We definitely got overcharged cos we is muzungus init, but we bought this lot for about £40:

- Two goalkeeper gloves

- A full set of team socks

- 4 ref whistles

- Set of ref cards

- 10 training cones

Jimi was super grateful and we celebrated with a trip to Java Cafe - Jimi needed one final burger from us of course. I managed to speak to Emily on the phone and we accidentally ordered a chicken curry (was delicious dammit) plus had an apple, cashew, carrot salad...with masala fries.

Our bodas cut across the highway onto the central reservation then to the correct side of the road (!) and we got to the bus station on time, hoping that it was not super delayed travelling from Kampala. Ended up being 45 mins delayed but in that time we were able to achieve many things:

- Phil enjoyed more beers with Jimi and at one point buggered off to a bar while I sat with all the bags wondering where they were

- Jimi fixed my sexy walking boot with some superglue

- Jimi fixed his own flip flop with superglue

- Jimi fixed Phil’s trainer with superglue

- Jimi recorded a video message for Buj & Jenni

- We pee’ed before the bus in some MANKY toilets (essential)

- We bought water before the bus (ESSENTIAL ALSO)

Phil - the man, the athlete, the legend - had only gone and booked us VIP seats on the bus that were approximately DOUBLE the size of the other seats what an absolute win, so we had no seats in front of us & leg stretching was 100% available. Phil tried to pie me off with the aisle seat but I managed to swerve it and nab the window seat obvs and the journey was pretty comfortable. At least for me.

We were at the Kenyan border by midnight and our East Africa visa made it easy to enter.

Annoying that they charge you to use the loo though, and Phil argued with them about it saying he had no cash yet and just went and pee’d without paying. He then walked straight up to the guy selling snacks to see what was available AWKWARD. When the man offered us some Shitcake I decided I wasn’t hungry. On closer inspection, I believe he was referring to the shortcake.

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