Day 5: 5.45pm

It is torrentially raining outside and has been for the last few hours which obviously means we cannot go out and play. Finnley is ok at the moment as he is fast asleep but I am going a little stir crazy staring at the walls!

Earlier most of the children went to church. We could hear the church group singing from home and will probably join the children next week to experience what it is like. Two of the children came back a little later in their best dresses, I tried to ask them if they had done anything special but language was a problem.

The children are so very lovely, but this morning I just wanted to do my washing alone as Finnley was upset after his ‘sun cream, followed by mosquito repellent, followed by anti malarial tablet’ experience which he despises. I took my washing near my room to do, but they all came running round from the orphanage to help and chat, which is very sweet. Again they showed me up with their washing skills – Kofi explained they wash faster because the muscles in their fingers and wrists are stronger than mine.

The children asked if we could drawing but they always draw the same thing – normally an aeroplane or car. So I asked them to do self portraits, which was really interesting to see how they thought of themselves, they asked to see my camera with photos of them to make sure they were drawing correctly. Next I asked them to draw their home, and then I ended up drawing what seemed like thousands of what they called English cars (actually my artistic skills are limited and they were just very basic rounded cars) but they loved colouring them in. Kofi, whom I believe is 12 is very good at drawing and showed me his art book with pride on the first day. He seems fairly quiet at the moment and his manners are excellent, I hope to get to chat to him a bit more over the next few weeks. Amu drew a picture of Finnley and titled it ‘brother’ and picture of myself and titled it ‘mother’ and a picture of my mum and titled it ‘grandmother’. The children here have a huge amount of respect for the grandparents and Francis told me that it is often grandparents that bring them up.

Something that is evident is that the children learn very well with repetition, when I arrived at the beginning of the week they all used to say ‘give me’ if I came out with paper and pencils but they now  mostly remain seated and say ‘please may I have’.

The rain has stopped slightly now, so we are going to make a run to the orphanage as they have a white board inside their room and try and help them to learn something. Although Finnley loves being in their room because of all the foam mattresses which he uses as trampolines.