Lack of sleep, Cheeseboy and football

I am writing this blog whilst watching my favourite film - 'Eat, Pray, Love' via computer on the wall of my house and eating a lovely sticky piece of chocolate caramel shortbread - a far cry from the rest of the day.

Having had a decaf coffee last night in a cafe, by 3 am I had come to the conclusion that it had not been decaf at all!  I read a huge chunk of my book whilst contemplating running a marathon and worrying about having to wake up in the morning. I felt pretty groggy at 7 am  after 4 hours sleep but headed off to playgroup at 8.30 hoping for an easy day. I was bombarded by toddlers when i walked in who were all grizzling and all wanted 'Jenny cuddles' as Rob Dunster aptly called it the other day. Within minutes I had 3 grizzly toddlers on my lap, another playing with my hair and another playing with my foot!  My patience was being tested but it held up!  I discovered I had one of a set of twins on my lap and the leader tried to explain that the other twin was crying cos she wanted to be with her sister so she rearranged the children and I ended up with screaming twins on me instead!  There were no 'accidents' today and I spent a long time playing with a little girl who has cerebral palsy and is just so cute!

I discovered that if i found a book at least 5 children would stop crying and want to read it - they just fought over my attention instead of crying!  It's great that they are such lively and vibrant children though and full of life rather than just being passively accepting of life.

The morning ended with loads of balls being played with outside and still they grizzled!  They had remembered that 'Mme Jenny' did good fun swings and they were all queuing up in the heat for a swing - just what I felt like doing!  I struggled with the heat today, I have drunk so much water  and have been permanently thirsty!

'Peace' with KB

Having gone back to feed lunch and welcome boys home from school (who both arrived minus their trousers which was interesting!!!) I popped home to drink water before meeting up with Cheeseboy and KB.  Who? you may well ask. When i had been out here in 2007 KB had been our guide and interpretor and similarly in 2009 Cheeseboy (proper name Joseph)  had taken on the role alongside KB.  I had kept in touch and had previously arranged to meet up.  They turned up (only 30 mins later than planned which is good for out here) and we headed off into town for something to eat (my treat).

Cheeseboy and me

 It was lovely to see them again and they wanted to hear all about Jo and Emma and everyone else on the trip from the previous years.  Most exciting for me is that they have promised to arrange to take my August group into the mountains for a long day excursion and that is very important to me. KBs sister is married to the pastor in a little church in the mountains where there is an Anglican hospital and a beautiful school but I would not go up there alone - English is not really spoken that deep in Lesotho!

KB Cheeseboy and me at KFC

They chose KFC (my 2nd trip there) and we had a lovely chat - they still think i am in my 30's so thats fine by me - they refuse to believe I  am so old!!!  When i met KB first in 2007 he estimated i was 37 and i had decreased 5 years today!!!!!  They bought me a lovely Lesotho Keyring and kept saying how wonderful it was that I was there. They are lovely Christian guys and were delighted to see pics of Jo and Emma that I had taken with me, I could probably have sold them books of photos at a good price! They are looking forward to meeting Steve - they have never met a rugby playing Englishman before.    Having both wanted their picture taken with me back at my little abode they had to go back to work so that gave me time to go and play with the children. Today - the 3rd Wednesday of the month is 'Time for God with kids' day!  This means all the staff turn out and play with the children - even the maintenance and management teams.  I played football with some of the boys (still struggling witht he heat) and then fed lots of little ones jelly and custard at snack time.  There was still a lot of grizzling going on!!!!!  Nurse Tiea was using the outdoor fun time to weigh and check the height of all the children so there was lots of undressing and dressing going on!

staff and boys playing football together

nurse Tiea weighing and measuring

The rest of the afternoon followed its normal pattern of bath/vaseline-ing and feeding. I was proud to have got through the day without any bodily fluids being spilt on me but this changed when i picked up a crying baby who needed a nappy change and then she threw up all her milk all over me more than once!  I did manage to feed mince and pap to a grizzly toddler whilst cuddling 2 babies and then managed to bottle feed both babies at the same time - neither of whom kept their milk down well!!!

Back for a shower to find Laury had rung me to say she was locked out at the main gate.  I picked up the message only shortly after she had left it so I grabbed the keys and ran to the gate!   I had forgotten the altitude here makes running impossible even for an athletic and fit lady like me (yeah right!). That finished me off and a bottle of water later I was clean and ready for dinner.   A nice quiet evening now and pleased to be doing my blog at just before 9 rather than just before 12!

I have to be out at 7.30am tomorrow to go to school with the children for the morning and then I am off with Donna for an afternoon in another orphange which I believe may be a bit of a contrast to Beautiful Gate.

I am ready for the challenge and hope to get some quality sleep tonight.  It has been a good day - the staff are really being friendly now and the ones i work with all the time are chatty and have managed to master my name and enjoy laughing at my attempts to speak Sotho!  it is such a hard language - far too many ms in it and the first bit of the words seem to be a jumble!  I have got most of the staff names now who i work with and rather than give me their Sotho name they tend to give me the English version which makes my life easier !

I don't think I  will ever complain of hard work again in England.  These ladies work so so hard the day shift come in at 7 and leave at 4.30 and the night shift does the other stint.  One lady in each house lives there 24/7 and trust me they are not all young!   it is like being a mother to 12 children without any break - they have 4 days off a month and then 30 days holiday over the year.  I couldn't do it but they do a remarkable job and every child is fed, safe and more importantly loved!  No child goes to school with an unironed shirt or dirty shoes and the houses are scrupulously clean, I saw a child drop a tiny bit of food today and he picked it up off the floor and ate it and I thought - yes you really could eat off this floor - it is so clean.  Each day I see more which makes me think how amazing these ladies are - they all have children of their own - many grown up and some of them will go home at night and have no running water or flushing toilets in their houses. Some of them have to be taught to use a flushing toilet when they start to work here!  It puts things into perpective doesn't it?

Some of the stories of the children are horrific too - it is not appropriate to write about them here but I have some stories to tell when I return to England, a concept I can only imagine at the moment! I presume life is going on there but I cannot imagine what it is like - my life here is all absorbing and every sense is stimulated every moment of the day - it really is another world and a world I am so happy to be a part of!

Love .............Jenny xx