Day 2: Orphanage

6.30.12.

The school-room where the orphans learn each day

After waking up unusually early (for summer at least), we prepared our backpacks for the upcoming day and headed down to a breakfast of fruit, fried cheese sandwiches and juice. At 8, our counselor Ferguson walked half of us (my cabin and one of the boys dorms) down to a little village where the orphanage lay. Today's work was mostly manual labor, where we pick-axed trenches around a plot formed to cage some newborn piglets, pick axed a path where we later wheelbarrowed tons of crushed rocks to, and where we machete-ed the overgrown grass and roots surrounding these areas (yes, I actually used a machete!!).

Looking at the photos they've just taken
- they loved the cameras!

 Around 'snacktime', the orphans began to arrive and we spent an hour drinking fantastic fruit juice and playing games with them. The kids loved our digital cameras, and spent the first half hour photoshooting each other before sitting, mesmerized, flicking through the pictures. I brought some bubbles and the kids loved them. I had about five boys circled around me laughing and screaming every time I blew a soapy sud, trying to pop it first. We had a blast.

After snack time, we all went back to work. I shoveled dirt from the trench with Nehemie, while local Antonio proved amazing at pick axing - he zipped through one 10 ft line of it in no time.  Soon it was lunchtime, and we all congregated in a little pavilion just up the hill, which turned out to be a legitimate tree house with a fantastic view of the swooping valleys and misty mountains ahead.

Playing with the bubbles - so much fun!!

We worked solely on the path after lunch for another 2 hours, until we left at 230 - covered in sweat and dirt - and returned to our wonderful organic farm paradise. We all jumped into bathing suits and then the pool, cooling off before the other half of our full GLA group returned. After dinner we had our first of many discussions.