Ultimate shopping - day two

Since yesterday took a bit longer than we expected, the plans were changed and, I thought, improved. We arrived at Challenge about 8:30 am to get an early start. This being Thanksgiving, we planned to finish earlier and come home for some relaxing cooking time in the afternoon. We dropped off the first group and took care of some shopping we needed to do.

The teachers were assigned to five kids each since these are the newest and youngest kids. Would you believe that they were the most well behaved out of the whole Challenge Farm? They were so mature. Many of the street kids tried to poke fun at them or get their attention. Each one handled it a little differently but they were all kind in dealing with the situation. On many occasions, one of Challenge kids would be seen giving away some of the food they’d bought with their Christmas money. Now that was a touching moment for me. One child in particular was all ready in the van to head back and stuck his arm out the window with a whole muffin and handed it to a little boy. This was a WHOLE muffin. Our kids don’t get bread often as any bread product is quite expensive. This was a sacrifice and yet the child didn’t hesitate giving it away. Now I’ve gotten carried away and left out a big part of the day.

Two and a half hours passed and we drivers were ready to take group one back and get group two. The kids were all in the meeting place and we were close to loading up the vehicles when Lynn leaned over to ask me, “What are those people doing by the van?” I didn’t see them at first since it was parked across the street but something caught my eye down by the tire. I had not seen this before but had heard stories. I immediately dashed across the street to find three parking attendants locking the van tire! Without thinking, I begin barking at them for what they were doing. They tried to tell me we were parked illegally. Well, yes, we had parked the van temporarily in front of a gas station entrance but, to our defense, the gas station was closed and the entrance was blocked with tires and rope so that no one could enter. This was part of my major argument with the attendants. No there is more to the story, but it gets a bit embarrassing that I was not able to control my frustration better than I did so I will conclude the story and leave out the part where my patience was not in tact. The parking attendants wanted 500 shillings to take the lock off, but one of our staff that was present knew a lady who worked in the office. She made us pay only 200 shillings. Neither amount was a lot in dollars, but I was speaking on principle here; 500 shillings is about $6.50. ☺ The whole fiasco took about 40 minutes so we were running a bit past schedule again.

I had sent Lynn back to get part of group two since I did not know when the van would be released. When I arrived back to the Farm, she had all 18 of the remaining boys crammed into the trooper (7 passenger vehicle). They were happy to see us coming. We evened out the boys and began our last shopping trek to town. This time, after we dropped off the group, we went to a nearby coffee house for a scrumptious lunch energizer. This was some much needed down time. The pickup time for the last group was 3 o’clock, well past the time we’d spent yesterday. How does this happen?

By 4:30 we were back at the Farm with all the kids but not without a near wreck in town, another car losing his brake and ending up in the trooper grill, a drunk man running into the front of the van, and almost thinking we had lost one child back to the street. What a Thanksgiving day to remember.

We Americans were able to make it home by 5:00 and begin our relaxing cooking evening we’d been looking forward to. Dinner was served by 6:45 and included homemade southern dressing with chicken, sweet corn, a sweet potato marshmallow dish, and pumpkin pie - all in an African day's work.