A LOL Moment turned into an Ah-Ha Moment!

Sunday afternoon Holly had a study session with some of her students in the library. I decided to walk up to the school building to use the internet and work on lesson plans. We ended up staying at the school for several hours, and decided that we would stay and have dinner with the students. As we were walking to the dining hall, in the pouring down rain, something hilarious caught our eyes. There were about 10 young boys playing on the basketball court in the rain…NAKED! It was one of those moments that we wished we had our cameras, but then we realized that would be kind of awkward, haha. As the dinner bell rang and the students began to walk to the dining hall, the boys ran to get their clothes. The fact that we were standing there, along with other students, did not seem to bother these boys at all. LOL!

They took their time putting on their clothes, and then very cautiously entered the dining hall. The boys are not students at Ricks, and live in one of the nearby villages. They took bags and crawled around the floor of the dining hall, hoping that some of the students would share their dinner with them. They scurried from one side of the room to the other, occasionally looking up to make sure no one saw them. Several of the Ricks students scooped some of their macaroni into their bags. Whenever the boys sensed that they were about to get caught, they ran quickly out of the building. This was the first time Holly and I had seen this happen, but we could tell it happened pretty regularly. I began to realize that these boys were fending for themselves – a free bath in the rain, and then the hope of some free food in their bag. The risk of getting caught in the dining hall seemed so small compared to the risk of not having food to eat. Ah-Ha! It began to make sense.

We had a good laugh! The thought of naked boys running around in the rain will continue to bring giggles and smiles to our faces. We also got a different perspective of what some of the children in the community go through on a day-to-day basis.