Day 30

Pin the Tail on the Donkey

This saying has never ever been meant in such a literal way.

Take a minute. Brace yourselves.

The children at Hope were crawling around on the ground pretending to be dogs and barking and such with a cute little tail. It’s Halloween (yes, they do celebrate halloween here) so I thought maybe it’s a left over from a costume from a previous year or something. 

Only when I went over and asked what they were doing and to potentially join in on their game did they rip the object out of the kid’s pants and thrust a severed donkey’s tail in my face.

Sight was the first sense to hit me. I’ll spare you details of this horrific encounter.

Then the smell of it filled my nose. There are many unpleasant smells here in Kenya. I will never forget my first day at Hope and all the new aromas I had to get used to, but this surpassed any nasty smell I have ever known. EVER.

But before you all get sick and decide forever to disregard this entry there is a better side. (Did you see how I didn’t split the infinitive Mom? See I listen)

Like I said, today was Halloween so Kelly and I decided to do something fun with the children--Halloween Masks!

Essentially, this consisted of foam plates with eye cutouts and a stick shoved through the side for a handle. What a success! 

We brought the tables outside into the sun (holy hot day. Not your typical Colorado Halloween) and they sat down to color the plates in any which way they wanted and then brought them to us to attach the sticks--which were really shish kabob sticks (don’t panic Dad, we watched them like hawks).

And then we brought out the finale--SWEETS! They got in a giant circle we went around passing out a single sweet to each child. I’ve never seen more joy on a child’s face over a single piece of candy. The second they saw the bag the all ran around screaming (yes screaming) “SWEETIES!!” 

I would have loved to pass out the rest of the bag but even after one piece these children were bouncing off walls (we bought two kilos of sweets and only went through half of one of the bags). So, we are saving them for another day.