Three days left...

Yesterday I said my goodbyes to Namakoma orphanage with a sports day hosted by myself and Anna. I say sports day but we use the term pretty loosely...chaos may be more suitable. We had a bottle lid and spoon race, an egg hunt, a sack race and a three legged race that never quite made it off the ground....

All in all the children liked it and I've only been there three times since I arrived so yesterday wasn't so sad when we left. There is one little girl called Irene who has lost both parents and she definitely has some kind of learning disability or something - she doesn't really communicate is very aggressive and is well behind her peers in terms of her behaviour. She's the size of a regular three year old but seems very much like a young baby still. I don't think mental impairment has much understanding out here so she is in for a tough ride. The other kids bully her at the moment but Mark (one of the coordinators here) said the kids do have a tendancy to protect others like her as they get older. It is hard to determine what is wrong with the kids here. You notice somethings not quite right but it could be anything, learning disability, brain damage from a high fever, trauma...

I will miss the kids more than anything else. I have given Grace a bracelet to keep and I have hundreds and hundreds of photos to put up when I get back to England.

Last night we had a cultural night which basically consists of inviting the village into the grounds, having a goat roast and trying out nsima and lots and lots of dancing. The traditional dancing in Malawi is done by the men alongside a lot of drumming, the dancers are terrifying....

Just tomorrow left to collect my belongings from around the house and then my final goodbyes on Monday and Tuesday of which most of my time will be spent at Chilombo village. My hunt for Kevin begins. I will be so sad to leave this place. Four weeks is the point where you really begin to get to know individuals and start forming a relationship, if I were to come back, without a doubt I'd be here for two or three months. I will always wonder what I could have learnt about the kids I've just started to form a bond with if I had more time and what more I could have done for them...

Tionana...