Mission Accomplished and..

...I am pooped!

Having spent a week and a half at the Bo De Pagoda I have been putting a great deal of thought into how the very generous donations you have entrusted me with to be spent on the children should be spent. The task has not has not been easy because the Pagoda receives many donations by way of clothes, sweets and treats for the children by visitors. That is not to say however, that the children have everything they need, because that is far from the case.

What the children lack is fresh fruit and much milk, so I have been taking in fresh fruit for them to eat/drink at snack times. The other thing I noticed was that they do not have much by way of variety in games to keep them entertained and I have seen no sports / outdoor games equipment at all, this is really sad especially given how much time they are made to spend outside.

So the mission began. This afternoon after spending the morning at the Pagoda Matthew (fellow volunteer from Fance)and I armed with: a carefully considered shopping list, money, a dictionary and much enthusiasm commenced our shopping trip on foot.

The first item on the list was a basket ball net together with a basket ball (great as a team activity and fun too) and after much bartering was easy enough to buy. The shop next door had skate-boards and Matthew and I both agreed although an impromptu purchase the kids would love it and it would certainly keep them moving so we bought one! Next stop was to buy some balloons, strange purchase you might be thinking but the children love them, you have to remember that they have very little and what they do have is very basic, but they get much enjoyment from the simple things, you might be strugglig to believe this but until yesterday when I saw how happy a child was after a volunteer had repaired a balloon for him with sellotape I would also have struggled to see why balloons were on my shopping list. The fun that the children were having playing with the balloon made it all the more worthwhile eventually finding them at a stationary stall.

Next on the list were water paints; we walked and walked and asked so many people but we could not find the paints anywhere, we even stopped at an artist's studio where we asked an artist mid work if he knew of anywhere where we could buy some paints for children, however, something got a little lost in translation here because he thought we wanted to become art students! Having been to the indoor and outdoor markets, traipsed through the crazy streets of the Old Quarter weaving and around the traffic, wandered around a supermarket, a rather plush department store and around the block for what felt like several times just by chance we stumbled across a little sweet shop within the courtyard of a fenced off large building, to my joy this little sweet shop also had a set of paint pots amongst its varied small toy collection. I was chuffed to bits and relieved not to have been defeated, the owner looked at us puzzled, on reflection I can understand this given Matthew and I were shouting 'hooray' and 'yeah' over and over!

Carrying our bags of shopping on the way back it was clear that we are very excited about going to the Pagoda tomorrow and seeing the faces of the children light up as they get to paint, skate and play basket ball!