I Bless the Kids Down in Africa!

We arrived to Tinjdad where we met up with our Peace Corps connection - Chris Blackwood. He took us on a walk through a little part of town called a duwar, which is kind of like a separated neighborhood. Our mission was to get some interesting photographs of how the locals here live - clay houses, dirt roads, palm tree oases, etc.


Upon our entrance to the duwar, we passed through a group of kids who saw Tim's camera and immediately wanted their picture taken! Tim humored them with his youth skills and got them riled up about posing. After that, they decided to follow us on our hike through the palm oasis. We had 18 following us, giggling, yelling, laughing, and posing to get their photo taken again and again. The boys were really aggressive, and the girls were super shy! I accidentally made one girl cry by walking towards her with a big smile on my face! After some time though, even the girls wanted their pictures taken. We taught them English words like sun, moon, and tree - whatever we could point at. We taught high-fives and learned the word for friend and said it over and over and over! When the kids started asking for money, I turned it around on them and asked them for money. One kid actually gave me two Durhams! Of course I didn't keep it. They were persistent in asking for some kind of gift so I gave in and made the mistake of giving something... I gave one kid an old earplug I had in my bag. He ran to Chris, who speaks Arabic, and said "Your friend gave me this. Can I eat it?" as he was putting it into his mouth! After that, all the kids wanted an earplug! Oops - won't do that again!

The experience as a whole was overwhelming in a delightful way. A crazy, huge group of kids followed us around for nearly an hour with a level of excitement that could have powered the towns electricity needs for a week!