What a day!
We flew to the 
The second we arrived the poverty just hits you! The children came running up to the plane dirty and curious to see who we were. We are all white and believe me that’s a novelty! In fact some of the kids throughout the day just looked at us and where saying the word for white in utter amusement! Words just cannot describe it; I think you really have to see it for yourself to really get it!
The kids looked at you with their big brown eyes and you could see that they were hoping you had something to give them! One of the group brought out some lollies and needless to say this caused some chaos as they fought over them. We are staying in the Sunshine Hotel which is the only hotel on the island. It really was the bare basics but you don’t need anymore than that… who are we to complain? We have everything we need and so much more… we are so spoiled!
We had our first project experience today. The journey to the project was an adventure in itself! We piled into two 4x4 trucks, one being an open back! The guys got to sit on a plank of wood nailed around the back.
The roads where incredible… if you can call them roads, they were more like a very rocky dusty track. Needless to say there was no way any normal car or bus would have made it! We even drove through a river bed, however because this is their dry season there was not a single drop of water! Everywhere was dry and very dusty! Vehicle had to go so slow, due to the condition of the road, that it took us about 10-15 minutes to pass a guy walking.
When we arrived at the centre the kids where so excited, screaming and jumping up and down! We were swamped from the moment we set food out of the trucks. They were beautiful, with huge smiles. 
They brought us into their church and we were greeting by all the children singing at the top of their lungs with great joy and pride! 
It was just breath taking! After a few speeches and presentations from different groups we headed outside again for our tour of the school. The classrooms were so humid and small. They had a few wooden desks and probably three children to each desk, the art classroom used a ping pong table as their desk.
They served us lunch in the art classroom, which consisted of rice, goat, chicken and salads. It’s not safe for us to eat salad so we tried our best to eat what we considered to be safe! Think ill have eaten enough rice to do me for a while by time I get home! J
I headed outside to some of the kids and within no time at all I was surrounded. We are truly a novelty. At one point I had four kids on each arm two hold my t-shirt at the back and 2 in front. It was really overwhelming. Everything interested them, from our sunglasses to our watches. Some hopefully point to our watched and then to their arms hoping that we would give them our watch. In fact the other Lynsey gave away a pair of her earrings.
After a while we took a walk up the street to visit some of the kids home.
Eight people live in this little hut. The mother, father and their six children. Two of the children are sponsored through compassion, and when we asked if this causes any problems they replied that generally no as they share everything that they receive with the rest of the family, but these children receive medical help whereas the others don’t and that makes such a huge difference as they cannot afford it. There is only one hospital on the whole island which is at least 45 minutes by car and they just could not get there. Compassion are trying to help a child at a time and release them from poverty, and although to some people this may seem to be unfair, it does make a difference! With our help this can grow and more children can be touched, its only 60p a day to sponsor a child, just think what a difference you could make to one child’s life for such a small amount.
We had dinner at the hotel made by the owner’s wife. We later discovered that she had been a former sponsor child of compassion and told us how she was the youngest in her family and what a huge difference it made to her and her family. This trip has really made me believe in what compassion does!
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