Mambo!!!

So yesterday afternoon I finally got round to visiting paradiso orphanage. The orphanage is not really that far away, maybe only twenty mins with John our taxi man, however it is situated in the middle of the local slums. It was a completely different way of life, so much poverty and crowdedness the slums were home to god knows how many people!! It was so dirty, there appeared to be no clean water and the smell from all the rotting rubbish was horrific!!! Having said that everyone we drove past was smiling and waving, shouting mzungu mzungu!!! It's amazing how little these people have but they always appear so happy!!

The orphanage was down a little dirt track, John dropped us off and said he would be back later to pick us up. The children rushed to open the metal gate at the back of the yard and couldn't wait to get us through the door. They were so excited to have somebody to play with it was unreal!! They all have shaved heads in Arusha (well majority do) so the fact that I had hair was a novelty, they must have spent about an hour just playing with my hair, plaiting it, twirling it and tying it in bunches. Let's just say my hair was in a big knot when they were finished, it needed an silly amount of conditioner to sort it out.

We gave the owners the toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap and colouring things so that they could dish them out appropriately, which left us with the rest of the things. The children went wild for the bubbles and stickers, they absolutely loved them!! As the children didn't have any hair we made the ribbons into bracelets for them, they loved all the bright colours and I spent the rest of the afternoon hearing "teacher, teacher tie this one!!".

Some of the older children spoke very good English, so they would translate things to the owners for us. Again these children are amazing, they have the most beautiful personalities and genuinely their cups are always half full, not half empty! It should without a doubt make us appreciate how lucky we are, and when we moan about the rain, the fridge breaking, our hair not going right, or even shop not having the right dress, we should certainly take a step back and think about people who literally have almost nothing but will always wear a smile.

It's not just the African women who are made of steel, it's the whole African population.