I walked up to church this morning and found all the Tumaini children sitting so quietly and nicely in chairs set up outside of the church. They were all dressed in their nicest clothes and anticipating the service, the food afterwards and the chance to play in the yard at our house later in the day. We waited outside for about half an hour and then everyone arrived and we could start the service. The children sat quietly, some sleeping in the laps of mamas, and others listening attentively. Even through the "harambee," the fund-raising service after the Easter service, the children were well-behaved.
After the services, they were free to go outside and prepare for the food. It had been a rainy morning and so we gathered under the little kibandas beside the church building. The ladies realized that the children couldn't eat well sitting in the kibandas so someone pulled a large tarp down and gathered the children into 5 or 6 circles. The children all sat quietly and patiently waiting for their food. Finally, the servers came out with large platters of rice heaped with beans, greens and goat meat. Each circle of children received a platter and they ate heartily.
Soon it was time to walk down to the Mission's property. The children all wanted to walk beside me and some in front. I told them that I was first and they had to stay behind me. It worked for part of the time, but they were too excited to get to the house. When we arrived, Ferdinand gave them instructions about what they were allowed to do and not allowed to do. Then they took off running to the backyard. It seemed that for the older girls, the big hit was the swing set. They took it over and sometimes allowed the boys to swing. The boys, of course, enjoyed playing with the soccer ball, football and beach balls. The little children enjoyed playing on the plastic slide and pretended to "drive" places. They would peep out at the adults and wave their hand saying, "bye." We also provided soda pop for the children and they all enjoyed that very much.
As events sometimes go here, all did not go according to plan. The children, 51 of them, were only supposed to stay for an hour since there were so many of them, the yard is not very big and it had been a full day of events. There were supposed to be two dala dala that brought the children to the church in the morning and to return them in the afternoon but only one dala dala showed up. So while the children were playing at our house, the one dala dala returned two loads of adults back to Shadi and got a flat tire in the process. As a result, the one dala dala was very late in coming to get the children. The children came down to our house around 4 p.m. and the one dala dala did not arrive to pick up the first load until 6:30 p.m. The final load of children was picked up at 7:30 p.m. Even though the time spent playing was longer than we had anticipated, the children had a wonderful time and we all thought it had been a special day.