a few pictures

Here I am with Santos- one of our favorite volunteers. He does a ton around Rubatano- lots of administrative work. He's so friendly- we love to work with him. He can speak about 4 words of English, but he told us that this is a "special" hat. We find it so funny because the sun shines right through the hole in the brim and into his eyes!

In this picture I'm with our good friend Jenny. She is working with the Peace Corps- she's so brave- she lives in a little house all alone in a village. We have lots of fun with her. I title this picture "Christmas come early". Dara got FIVE packages in one day! Don't worry though- she's really good at sharing and I got some mail last week, so I was just as excited as she was. We pulled a mattress into the living room (we don't have a couch), had tea and cake, and opened "presents". It was really fun.

This is me with one of the older girls on an orphan day. We're playing some sort of a hand game- I don't think either of us knew what hand game we were playing, but it was fun. Last weekend Rubatano had the first meeting for just the older orphan girls- aged 13 and up. The goal is to teach these girls a skill that they can support themselves and their younger siblings with. It's also to give them a chance to talk with each other about thier challenges and to hopefully prevent them from turning to men to fill their needs. The volunteers will teach the girls how to garden, cook little donuts to sell, and once we have sewing machines-how to sew. The first meeting went really well with around 60 girls showing up.