children! scarper!!

Each time we stayed at a destination (3 nights) we were with the group that we met at the tour office, who was also the group that I had the pleasure of sharing their 4x4 when Lucy had her accident. When in their car we stopped at the place where Lucy was to be left and we would pick up a new cook. The children that surrounded us could sense that I had chocolate in my bag... they gathered around us asking for sweets then innocently waiting for us to speak. A few of us tried talking to them, because I couldn´t talk I asked them to dance for me. Which one seven year old, celia, would only do if I did first. So, stupidly I did some turns and stepped from side to side, in front of all of these people that I had recently met. Luckily they smiled at us with encouragement. We carried on dancing to eachother and ending up twirling eachother, unsuccessfully when she tried to turn me, being half my height n all. I asked if I could take their picture, to which they were shy at first but then were really happy to be accidentally caught in a picture that I showed them. Half trusting a boy who wanted to take a picture for me, I ran along side him as he took pictures of the most shy girls. Then Celia wanted to take pictures but couldn´t understand the idea of not looking through a view finder and kept trying to look through the zoom and taking pictures of her face upsidedown. Some experiments later and she got it. Now there were less children so I dçfigured I had enough chocolate for just them. As soon as the chocolate came out it seemed like a war had borke out and more kids flew around the corner in a perfectly made war line to get to the fron. I broke off the smallest pieces of chocolate understanding how it could of felt for Jesus handing out fish. It really did go far. Aiming for the smallest kids first so they wouldn´t cry, I ended at the melted part of the chocolate and threw it into the crowd and they all scarpered towards it and followed the kid that grabbed it. Wow. In hindsight, I should never have taken out my chocolate. Ben, from the other group, wound me up that the crying kid in the distance was upset that he didn´t get any chocolate. I know this wasn´t true, I´d seen him fall over.

Living in the middle of nowhere seems to have given these children a trustworthy and unneedy attitude (other than for chocolate). Having not seen so much wealth or objects of desire they appear unscathed by modern living. They were beautiful. The parents all stood at the edge of the square watching but not doing any more. Just observing. I wander what they were thinking. I hope not, please stop taking advantage photographing my children. We tried to take very few photos so as not to upset anyone but you never know. Its better that the children took more photos than I did.