kimsequences

Consequences , or in my world better known as 'kimsequences' are things that I have experienced a lot here. I have an awesome hour with the older kids beating on drums , and playing bells and am having too much fun without realizing that all the drums are broken. Another consequence of trusting someone and giving the benefit of the doubt and then being let down by seeing them steal . Letting some children in the house to watch a cartoon ,while other kids who find out throw rocks at the roof. One consequence I have not yet felt is the consequence of falling in love. With about 600 people  . I will have to leave them someday. I don't know all these 600 people yet in fact I may not even know 200 people , but I still love them all. What has been the exciting things going on at Noel orphanage? Well one afternoon a tree got cut down . Half the children assembled at the front where the tree was being chopped down, 6 men pulled at ropes to get the tree down , Instead of pulling the tree away from them and everyone else they pulled it down towards them, they had to run for dear life to escape the falling tree , one man just managing to run away in time. The tree landed on the fence , and soon a flurry of cleaning up started. I helped with the amusement of everyone pick up the logs and throw them on the wood pile , after that the girls got to work and started sweeping the path off all the leaves and saw dust . It was a big job since the path was not smooth and the brooms we had were pretty useless. I flurrily swept , and same did many other girls,looking up with sweat going off my face , I  noticed all the boys/ men sitting down watching us work. I said Umuhungu Ni bebe , Umukobga ni bgeeza, which means Boys are bad, girls are good. I said this once and started a girl power movement which has not yet ceased!  There was a spontaneous cheer among all the girls and a loud chant saying what I had said. I think the boys thought it was more funny than annoying, and nobody offered to help so obviously it wasn't much of a success. Another exciting thing that happened, was that a local church choir came to entertain the orphans, they had music and dancing and some plays with good morals. One of the fables that they acted out was about a white 'sugar daddy' going to buy a rwandan girl. I was not amused. While there was dancing a cute little girl ilakoze, who is four , never left my side . Her mother works in the special needs unit , and ilakoze dragged me to get Dory one of the happy special needs girls (or I should really say woman since i suspect she is older than me) , and then she dragged me right out of all the fun into the special needs unit to bring out two men so that they could participate in the fun too. What four year old would be so compassionate and sympathetic that she would think of other people particularily special needs (many people think that they are mad or possessed with evil spirits and semi human here which is very sad) in the midst of a dance party? I was so moved. If she didn't have a mother , I would have considered adopting her then and there. The other exciting events of Noel was tie dye, a lady came to show the women who make crafts how to tie dye clothes, many staff and orphans and volunteers got there clothes tie dyed, the most awesome being one of the workers who has exactly the same red overalls as my dad had tie dyed zebra like stripes on it. How could you get any more awesome , He recieved a round of applause from me.  Two exciting things for me personally have been getting money out, I had no money for a week as my eftpost card wouldn't work in the atms in Kigali and Gisenyi. As in zero franks , no money on my phone nothing. It was only when I went to gisenyi , which another volunteer paid for me to go to because she wanted me to help her with something , and when I saw her put her card in the machine I commmented ' thats not how we put our cards in in New Zealand', and then I decided to try it and instead of spitting out the card to me I got money instead. I thought duhhh how can I be so stupid , I can't think when I ever used my card in the Atm machine in New Zealand , so how could I possibly know what way it should go into the machine. Another exciting thing is that I have been making my own cooked dinners now, I am officially sick of beans rice potatoes carrots spaghetti, chips and fish , we get any combination of that for lunch and dinner. lunch is usually better than dinner so I figured I could start making my own dinners. Since only one element works on our electric stove and the oven does not work and neither does the kitchen light the options are limited.Tonight I made savoury omelette, and it was delicious. Vegetables are so ridiculously cheap here, for example you can buy 3 capsicums for 50 cents, and 4 tomatoes for 20 cents etc. cucumbers are 20 cents each. Its great. The best news is Noella is getting better, the sores on her body are nearly all healed, now she has very saw knees , I know that this is the next stage of leprosy when the muscles start to deteriorate. This whole week she has been having good days except for yesterday when her knees got massaged. She is a little madam , grumpy in the mornings and bossy in the afternoons. And she has me wrapped around her little finger. When she is happy she is an absolute delight, very expressive and easy to tease and likes to tease back. I love her in any mood of course.
At the orphanage this week I have done things such as cuddled the babies (a new 1 day old orphan baby arrived this week) and done pre school sessions with the 5 and 6 year old girls that involves learning english singing songs and playing games, spending time at the special needs school, done library sessions , and done a whole lot of teasing , and of course spending time with Noella. Yesterday there was a mega pep talk from Madam director in a meeting for all the older kids that they must study hard , and that they must to well in school in order to be successful . They must also not ask the volunteers for balloons and lollies but for english lessons. The first question the kids asked me 'Kimu can we have a bon bon (lolly)'. sigh. anyway I ended up doing maths and english with the P6 boys, they have there exam today and all next week to see if they can go on to secondary school. Last night we also had a session in the library until  9 pm when they had to go to bed. I must admit that doing Maths without a calculator and with formulas was much harder than I thought it would be, actually the fact that they are doing trigonometry anad algebra in primary school was scary enough , but I sometimes had no idea what I was talking about. Today I am supposed to go over science with them. Groan .If there is anything that I am bad at, it is Science. Hopefully one of the other volunteers will help me.
This week I also got rid of scabies. Or bed bugs whatever it was. I was itching all over and these pimple like bites appeared all over me particularily on my back, it felt like things were crawling over me , so I got some anti scabies oil from the pharmacy and boiled my clothes sheets and blankets. I have not itched since then  ,which is good. A lot of kids have hurt themselves this week two kids 'fell out of bed' one looks like she has a broken foot and the other has an arm that is sprained.Also one  of my favorites Benwau is sick ,by spoiling him I hope he will get better soon. I am really getting along with the older girls, one girl Providence is a bit older than me, she is currently studying vet nursing at university but is on her university break, shes super sweet and we have a good laugh together. Other girls Alice, Lillianne, another alice, another Noella , sifa and brigette are all younger than me , but I am really bonding with them. Some of there stories are so sad. They always tease me about the older boys in the orphanage. The older boys are fun ,  big flirts , and very lovable. More on them later :)
I am off to the market to buy potatoes.. toodles
Love Kim