When we arrived we began with a service inside two of the school classrooms and then we set up for our clinic & clothing distribution. The students from the school were told to go outside and wait for the puppet show! You can see the ocean of eager faces that were waiting. However, as I went to the van to get my bag of puppets, I discovered to my great dismay that I HAD LEFT THE PUPPETS BEHIND! I can't express how upset I was at myself for not checking the van personally. I had simply assumed that the people that loaded the equipment had loaded the puppets as well. My mistake for not verifying. So, I asked myself, what do I do now?What I decided was to tell the story without the puppets. There is an old saying in the theater "the show must go on!" So I worked out some motions to suggest the characters (monkey, lion, crocodile, elephant, giraffe, and hippo) and, with the help of my interpreter, told the story. It wasn't a puppet show, but it got the message and I think was entertaining for the kids.
After the no-puppet show the kids had to line up to go inside our "kids' club" room and do a craft and receive a knapsack and some sweets (that's candy to you and me). Immediately a problem arose as all of those children began to press toward the door and make it difficult to get in and nearly impossible to get out. I struck up a conversation with some older school children and recruited two of them to assist me in keeping the others in line. They did a fantastic job and I rewarded them by personally taking them through the clothing line so they didn't have to wait (since they had given up over an hour of potential queue time to help me). Their names were Siphosethu and Bongani.After the work of the day was complete we were treated by the church to tea and scones and we left just as the sun was setting over the mountains.
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