Dekooijtjes : One morning in the slum

The kids were a bit wild in the beginning which made it challenging but it is not of harm to us.
But I think they slowly start to understand when they obey rules and order and use good manners that they might be rewarded for that.

For the children it is always a big challenge to made the playground out of the cardboard then find a spot, sit down and remind calm. Especially on days like this when so many show up! It seems that we get more and more kids every time. And we also get a lot of attention from the passengers. Last time a group of zungueiras (women street vendors) asked us to visit their village too. I'm sure that our "vagabond school" would enjoy success in every Angolan district.

The people are usually very friendly and I never felt threatened. Only today there was a completely stoned guy who was very touchy and was interfering and disturbing our group. Luckily the villagers helped us to keep him away. And then he returned bringing us his two little boys who looked rather anxious.

We played bingo, the kids did a lot of coloring and they even tried to read some books.
The kids seem to like doing their art work and enjoying all the activities. Some are reading very well others can't read at all. You see obvious differences only while looking at their clothes, as long as they wear some!
Many of them are orphans or are born from prostitution. Their extended family or neighbors are taking care of them. But there are so many orphaned children that the community simply can't manage to help them all.

It's very nice to see the reaction of the people and kids over there and see that they appreciate what we do for them.
You can tell that they really warmed up to us and that they have a good time the same way as we do.
During reading the books we picked up randomly some of the toddlers and babies to make sure they can see the pictures as well. They started to cuddle. I was touched.

I remember when we started to visit them they would even cry when we said hello to them. They were very frightened by us naturally.
So it was so nice to realize that they trust us enough to hold them now.

When we were about to leave some ladies surrounded me asking me something I couldn't understand. They wanted me to hold the tiny baby girl who was only a few month old.

Helping unload cardboard from car.

Some of the ladies were helping us disciplining the kids. This one was a little too agitated yelling at them hitting them with a stick and even throwing pebbles on their bold shaved heads!