There was this one orphan girl who when we went to her house was away collecting the water. Because she wasn’t home, we went to visit another orphan at their house. When she got back from collecting the water she found out that we’d already been there. So she ran all the way to where we were. When she got there, she was crying. She asked us if we could go back to see her at her house because she had something for us – so we did. When we got there she gave us a chicken and she was still crying. I didn’t realise it was such a big thing for us to visit them at their house – it was like a movie star was visiting them.
When we visited the school I noticed how different it was to our school.
The Year 5 kids took Tom and I outside to play in their playground. The playground was just a dirt area with wooden soccer goals at each end. But they didn’t have any soccer balls because they were all worn out. Their classrooms were similar to ours, only the walls were bare and they had black boards, not white boards. But everybody seemed so happy to be at school and they were friendly to us.
The people in Africa were much more generous than us because they gave us things when they didn’t have many – and we have many things but we don’t give much. Most of the orphans we visited gave us one of their chickens, when they didn’t have that much at all. On the day we visited the school, Raylyn’s sandal broke. One of the girls that boarded at the school ran inside to get a pair of sandals to give to Raylyn. Then she fixed Raylyn’s sandal and gave it back to her after Church on Sunday. When we went to Church I saw that so many more people go to Church than they do here.
My teacher at schools motto is
No matter how bad you think your life is, somebody is always worse off than you.
And after my trip to Africa I’ve found that it’s true.
Joe
