Kids

One of the most amazing things about this country, and a massive reason why we're here, is its children. Currently, I am sitting in a fully furnished house,  eating, using my laptop, listening to music on my ipod and playing 'draw something' on my phone, yet just 5 minutes down the road there are kids who don't have any of these things, the majority do not even have any electricity or running water. And yet these kids don't sit there feeling sorry for themselves or make a fuss about it they just get on with life and make their own fun. A few days ago we were driving around the townships and I saw kids skipping with a dead snake! It was really gross but also pretty amazing because they were all just having loads of fun, until the boys started chasing the girls with the snake ! 

The sports clubs here are run for kids 9-15 but yesterday over 35 little tiny kids turned up so me and Jess took the little ones off to play so they weren't in the way. As there were so many of them we struggled to know what to do to keep them entertained. We soon realised that we didn't actually have to do anything, because they entertained themselves using absoutely nothing.  We started doing 'the hokey cokey' which the kids found hilarious and after that they just began singing endless songs and showing us all the actions. It was so cute and so humbling to realise that these kids just didn't need anything to have a good time and that it wasnt about what me and Jess did to keep them entertained it was just about us being there with them. The consistancy of the sports clubs that happen once a week in each township are so vitally important to these kids, many of whom are from broken families, as it shows them that someone truely cares about them and wants to spend time with them, its hard to put into words just how important that is. 

In the Western World it seems like kids these days need all the latest gadgets to be happy and yet they do not even appreciate them. Last week at sports club we were doing questionnaires to see the effect the sports programme had on the lives of the kids that were involved. The kids were obviously given pens to fill the survey in and when they had finished they were desperate to keep the pens. Its crazy how things that seem so small an insignificant to us mean so much to these kids.

However, something that really annoyed me was when I was going through stuff that was donated to the kids here. Out of 3 big boxes of things only about 10 books and 1 truck were actually worth having. There were puzzles with missing pieces and books with pages ripped out and colouring books that most of the pages had been coloured already. It really fustrated me that people thought that these were good enough to donate. Just because these kids have come from homes that have nothing doesnt mean they dont deserve the best, like every other kid.