Grrr...Blogging is hard

So once again please use your imagination and pretend today is Sunday. I'm already getting bad
with updates...

Today was by far the most fun I've had in a very long time. It was children's support group day!! I sat in a group for men 18-25 and we talked about what happens when they isolate themselves from the community. I suggested journal writing and role models who could come speak at the support group and the guys wanted to try writing. We had lunch and a treat, orange Fanta, and then off to the children's group.

The group is held at a mosque in Nyamirambo and we took a very crowded minibus to get there. All of us from the morning support group got out and walked to the playground and soccer fields in the back...you could hear the voices of tons of kids...Then, when we stepped into view about 200 kids shared a collective moment of silence before the stampede.

I didn't even get to put my bag down before I had children swarming me from four years old to ten. Boys and girls. Two little girls one about seven and another about four ran up to me and held my hands. This is a reaction kids give mazungo's a lot here and they're incredibly desperate for some sort of contact. The kids were fighting over who got to hold my hand. There was pushing. There was shoving. We were one step from complete and utter chaos. (Hear that Brandon, some people enjoy holding my hand in public...) anyways these kids were adorable.

When I finally made my way to the picnic shelter area, a group of girls were dancing. I walked over to see them and they taught me to dance. Not too bad, dancing in less than five minutes. Then we played relay games. There were two lines of kids and each sent one runner with a stick starting from opposite ends to run around in a big circle and they tried to touch the other runner with the stick. When you got back to where you started, you passed the stick. The kids were slightly losing interest and the other adult facilitators were trying to keep them playing so I kicked off my shoes, hiked up my skirt and hauled some major ass. I could just hear laughing and the occasional shouts of "mazungo" (I imagine there was some pointing as well...) The kids were cheering me on and I was trying not to trip or get caught by the seven year old behind me. My team lost, but the important thing is that I did not lose my dignity to a first grader. Almost, but not quite.
After playtime we sat under the picnic area. We finally wrangled 200 kids and then I busted out the camera...I have a new found appreciation for the professional photographers that take the class photos in elementary school...Eventually the group shots were done, but I made the mistake of trying to take pictures of smaller groups and more natural shots of the kids which turned into an act of mob violence eliciting an exhibition of major police force. Well, 200 screaming kids crowding me reaching for my camera, pulling on my clothes and yelling at me is just as serious. They were great though. It was truly an enjoyable day and I'll let my pictures tell the rest of the story. All of these kids are HIV+.