Its all fun and games until...

Last Sunday afternoon I headed over to Dala Kiye, the orphanage, to play games with the children. Christy and I were in charge of organizing a game for all the kids to play. We started off playing one of the games the children already knew. Their English isn’t that great, so it was hard to think of a game that would be easy for them to understand. So we played a game a lot like capture the flag. It was fun but I decided that we were going to change things up after playing for a little while.

I decided it would be fun to teach the kids how to have three-legged races. It would teach them how to work together with one another, and I’m sure its something exciting that they had never done before. So I choose two of the boys, Simeon and Jordan, they are about 8 years old, and very outgoing. I thought they would make good examples. I proceeded to tie their ankles together with a piece of cloth. I linked their arms together and pointed to a nearby tree for them to walk towards. When they got to the tree they were to turn around and come back towards the rest of the children. Well, things didn’t go exactly as I had imagined and they never made it to the tree. Theses rambunctious little guys took a few steps together, and then tried to run in opposite directions. They ended up falling down and laughing. Then they got up and took another step and fell over again. This wasn’t working at all, so I decided to untie them-easier said than done. When they ran indifferent directions it made the knot tighter. I couldn’t get it undone. Panic overcame them and they both started bawling. I think they thought they were going to be linked to each other forever. A huge group of kids gathered around as I franticly tried to get them undone. Yikes, this doesn’t look good at all. The white lady is making the Kenyan children cry! Fortunately, about 15 minutes later I finally loosened the knot and separated their ankles. Simeon and Jordan were pretty shook up. I gave them hugs and tried to explain them that it was a fun activity but they didn’t see the fun in it. Needless to say we will not be having anymore three-legged races at Dala Kiye!

The next day I went over to Dala Kiye and Simeon ran up to me and showed me his soccerball the he wanted to play with. I was surprised he even wanted to be around me after the events of the previous day! So from then on Simeon, the rest of the boys, and I play soccer. Mom, all that money you spent on select soccer is paying off! Simeon and I are always on the winning team!

Here is a link to some pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049931&id=28700769&l=06bb3