Day 6 - Off to Mbita!

href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CPAULAM%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml">

Yesterday I woke up to a chorus of children singing – the kids were all at “church” which is basically a video of someone speaking to them and then the older ones lead them all in singing. It went for the whole morning – 8am to about 12. They are so sweet – and great singers, actually. Sunday also means they get to watch videos and t.v., have their soccer ball out and play around. Most of them have been in the common room/dining hall most of the day. That is where church is and where the t.v. is – it is on SO loud! They crack me up. Earlier, Vio our youngest (we think she’s probably 3 or 4), was playing tag with one of the older kids. There is a big truck that Harold, one of the other employees here, drives for a trucking business. Anyway, it was parked here and the girls were chasing each other around it. They did that for over a half-hour! It was hilarious – Vio even figured out to look under the truck to see where Winnie, the older girl playing with her, was. It is good to see them smile and laugh – during the week it is so intense with school, chores and homework, they don’t get to play that often.

We took all the kids out to a field across the street to play football (soccer) – the older girls have been signed up to play in a league here in Kisumu, so we wanted to give them some practice. They all just got new tennis shoes – it is amazing how much they improve with shoes! All the other little kids play in just bare feet – I don’t know how they do it.

I talked with some of the older girls after the game and asked them about YGC. Many of them have been here since they were 6 or 7. This is their home or at least the only home they’ve really known. From my perspective, it’s still a hard life, but it’s all they know and they are happy with it.

On Saturday, we went for a boat ride in Lake Victoria to see the hippos – that was pretty cool. I was a little afraid because hippos can get pretty aggressive if they feel threatened, but our guide said these hippos were used to boats and were scared of them. They would just swim away. We saw two adults and a baby – then our guide said he could take us to a place where we could see 30 hippos. At first, we said no – it was going to be more expensive, a longer trip and we needed to get back before dark – but then, he said he would take us anyway because he wanted us to bring him other business. It was a longer trip, but it was beautiful – we didn’t end up seeing any hippos because there were fisherman there and they had scared them away. On the way back, we saw a gorgeous sunset – and a lot fishermen going out for the night. They fish all night and come back in the morning.

After the boat ride – we went out for Indian food – there is actually quite a sizeable Indian population here. It was great food, actually, although maybe a little spicy for our stomachs at the time… It was pretty busy out – it was Saturday night and a lot of people were celebrating Valentine’s Day. We were sitting outside this club and all the songs that kept floating out were old love songs like Celine Dion, ‘NSync, Brian McKnight, etc… Pretty funny. And the cover was higher than normal because they had a “special” DJ. Ha ha.

Okay, it is off to Mbita. I may or may not update while I’m there – depends on how expensive the internet is and how fast it is. Maybe I can at least put on a few pictures. If not, talk to you in two weeks!