Africa Watoto Blogs

Kenya, Mombasa – 17/01/2010

But the nicest day of them all, was a Sunday when myself and another volunteer which is doing an amazing job with the children, when to the village and bought 13kg of sword fish, a couple of kg of potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables to cook for them a fish soup! Their joy was indescribable! We all worked as a team, some of the boys were cutting the potatoes, other the carrots, I took some of the boys to help me cut and clean the fish, some we had to fry as well, I wanted to set up the cooking fire exactly as they were doing every day, and that was a mission impossible, but I DID IT! We collected all the fine pieces of wood that it is right for the fire to be set up, everyone wanted to help, pushing each other to show who is the strongest one, so young and adorable, and I could see that these boys were soon to become very strong men! I was anxious how the soup would taste like, as I had never cooked before for 48 people, and here we had 48 boys that needed very good portions of food. I could see their anxiety pictured in their faces, they had never had soup in their life, as they are eating daily rice and beans.

The outcome after all was great, I was so happy that I had make them happy with my cooking! It was funny in the beginning, I was serving the soup, and two of the other boys were serving the rice and the beans with the fried fish, and I had to explain to some that they can first have the soup and then eat the rice and beans with the fried fish, but they wanted to mix it all together!!! When the older ones had the soup on its own, at once the little ones did the same, and they loved it and they wanted more, but within seconds the soup had finished!!Great times, unmemorable!

Great fun, great kids, feelings that I had never felt in my life before, so beautiful and pure. The rest of the day we played, we did together their laundry, everything by hand, we took the little ones and gave them a bath, then straight to bed to read a story to sleep, they all wanted to read them a story and a warm hug, I could see how much they‘ve missed, needed love and I was glad that I was there to give them my love and I could make them a bit happy at least for as long as I was there.

These children are strong, they fell down and get hurt but don’t cry, they chase those huge mosquitos and catch them by hand and make fun out of it, they don’t have clean sheets and pillows but they do not complaint, they have no spoons and proper meal plates but they use their hands and are simply happy that they have at least food to eat, and I’m thinking….why there are not exchange programs between developed countries and third world countries , for the same age of children to swap countries for a week and receive a greater lesson about life, respect, appreciation as greediness, taking everything for granted has made us stay untouched for the real serious life problems this nation is facing daily and some many years.