Day 9 - Raffy now has friends 😊

Happy day 9! We started the day with the usual eggs or jam on toast to fuel us for the long day ahead. Howard's buddies, Aman and Jasaman, helped us with with our first project, building benches for the pre-school children to put their shoes on. We started by measuring and marking the wood then sawing, nailing and painting as seen in the photos. During our break, Mr Lane and Jess went to the local shop and got a range of drinks including this radioactive-looking green fizzy drink that remains untouched...

Todays lunch was prepared by Lottie, Rosie and Josie in massive woks over an open flame. People were saying it was the best meal so far and were even asking for the recipe so we can make it for all of you at home! Followed by Ella falling out of the toilet and back off the concrete path into a tree. She now has a very dramatic bandage wrapped around her leg!

Following some recent tardiness, we decided anyone late would have a punishment of carrying the 20 litres of water and 30 pots of paint for the 15 minutes walk to the school in the 30 degree heat, however this didn't put off Cheerful Charlie (Patrick Paul) from being early and subsequently late due to his poor preparation and proceeded to have a temper tantrum over this.

Once we arrived we began our hard-work and started filling in our sketches on the school walls with paint (well somewhat as Patrick had a tumble over the paint crushing Lottie and Frankie on his way down). Initially it started off productive until Raffy and Finn spotted a lonely boy with a football. We later found out his name age and religion a that's all he could tell us. Out of nowhere a pack of young school children from the hostel opposite cam bombarding over to play football of which all they wanted to see was the Ronaldo trick, and duck duck goose in which we all lost as the children here are surprisingly fast and loved chasing Rosie.

You're probably wondering about the title. Remember the little boy mentioned earlier, his name was Mahamud and it turns out he has a strong passion of playing tag with Raffy. It bought a tear to our eyes seeing one of our own spread his wings and make his first friend. In fact they played for so long and developed such a strong bond that this little boy reminded Raffy to drink some water a he was shrivelling up like a prune. The whole group enjoyed his presence as he was hilarious and many jokes including 6 7 which we can confirm is universal. Globalisation in action says Miss Searle and Mr Lane (specifically Mr Lane).

On the way home, we ground the leaders gears so much by drifting into the middle of the road far more than we should've that they made us line up single file with one hand on the person in front while blasting "Heigh-ho" (except Miss Searle and Rosie who waled ahead so we are totally exempt from this and innocent as always). It was extremely embarrassing as we could've been viewed as preschool children ourselves and clearly passers by thought it was hilarious as some started taking videos.

As we are writing this Alex Lane has made a new friend also, a frog which has just jumped onto him causing him to scream at 300 decibels and a frequency you can probably hear at home. We have to end it here as we have just been caught in another tropical storm with a lot of lightning, thunder and power cuts.

(p.s. please can you help me with my graduation outfit - Clemmie)