Not Your Average Day at the Fair

Today we experienced our first African fair…with 56 kids and 4 Aunties.  We piled everyone into a 15-passenger van and headed for an hour and a half bumpy drive to Jinja.  As you can imagine, bodies were piled on top of each other and seat belts were not a concern.  What was a concern was the children needing to susu (go to the bathroom).  Dacia told the children that they must wait until we arrived in Jinja, but the Aunties informed us some of the children had already started to susu. Needless to say, we quickly pulled over.  Every child hopped out of the bus and began peeing on the side of the road.  Note: this is normal in Uganda and not seen as unsanitary or illegal.  What a way to start the day!

We arrived at the guesthouse in Jinja and dropped the older kids off for lunch and took 22 kids ages 5-8 to the fair.  The fair was massive and consisted of rides, games, shopping, vendors, wild animals and thousands of people.  While this might sound like a nightmare, the Arise Africa children continued to amaze us with their obedience and respect.  Not one child ever asked for anything, ran off, or strayed from our long line.  The children enjoyed swinging, the bouncing castle and the petting zoo, which consisted of a 20 ft. python, ostrich, crane, lion, jaguar, cheetah and a camel, which Kaitlyn and Layne rode (Thomas claimed to have no interest, but we know he was scared)! After a couple hours of fun, we dropped the younger kids off and picked up the older kids. 

 

The older children were just as obedient and well behaved.  We took them to the Kids Zone, which kept them entertained.  The smiles that the kids possessed brought so much joy to our hearts.  Many of them had never experience life in the city much less a fair.  Dacia funded the entire trip herself, including snacks for the kids and hats which can be seen in the pictures.  Dacia is truly a special person and we have seen her selflessness in so many ways and this is only one of them.  What we thought was going to be an average day at the fair, turned out to be much more.