Because, the children eat with the adults, things can sometimes get quite interesting. At some meals, one little boy will get it into his head to show off for everyone, no matter how many times he’s asked to sit down, he will still keep at it. Another day, half the school children and ‘buem’ have to line up and get ‘flogged’, because they haven’t cut their hair short enough (Apparently it’s required in school that your hair be kept quite short). They use a cane. The older the boys get, the louder it whistled through the air, and goes ‘tuck’ on their hand.
Two days later, they were all supposed to get spanked for being late for school. Lucky for them, my dad managed to get them out of it with a warning. He also told the parents that it was their fault as much as the childrens and in true Eddie Vetter style suggested, that maybe the parents need to be spanked! It worked! They’ve come to breakfast in their school uniform since then and we’ve heard no more threats of spanking.
One morning at breakfast, little Rose couldn’t decide where she wanted to sit today, so this little boy named Edidiong led her from table to table, but nothing would do. He just gave up and left her to her own deciding. Eventually, she decided she wanted to sit at her older brother’s place at the table, so she tried to push him off the bench. He ignored her completely, except for a tiny, little smile that hovered around his mouth and kept dipping his piece of white bread into his tea and calmly ate away. There he sat, five or six years old, and his tiny one and a half year old sister was working desperately and very stubbornly to push him off his place. First with her hands, then with her head and then with her voice. The whole dining room was laughing already and finally mom came to the rescue and put an end to the affair.
Another day we heard a loud howl of disappointment, a little girl went running over to her father, Gody Major, and threw herself against him in tears. The cup he had just raised to his lips splashed all over the table and he, quite surprised, bent over his little daughter’s braided head to see what she wanted. He then stood up and quietly asked the women something. Getting a negative answer, he returned to his daughter and gave her his bowl of rice. She seemed quite content with that and brought him her portion of rice and peace and quiet returned. The problem was that there aren’t enough bowls in the kitchen. The ones we do have are very ‘vergrintet’ and many are burnt on the outside from getting too close to the fire. There are hardly enough for five on a table and the sixth person has to eat out of the lid. Apparently this little girl didn’t get a bowl and didn?t want to eat out of the lid.
On our table, because it seats eight people, sometimes three different people have to wait their turn for a bowl. It’s a good thing that we have at least a half hour to eat, instead of the fifteen minutes that many colonies get at home! My mom and me share most of the time. When we cleaned a storage room we found some spoons and cups that we could put to use, so now at least we don’t have to wait our turn for spoons and cups, but the bowl situation remains the same. We’d really appreciate it if some kind hearted community found some nice hard plastic bowls for us (Melmack or something like that) and send them via DHL. We need at least a hundred, if we get more then that, we would be very grateful for that too. Please! Do this small deed! I don’t think any of you, who haven’t yet seen it, can imagine the poverty here and how much your help is needed. I’ve been hearing about it for more than half my life and still I was shocked by it. Help these people just a little more than you already have and I am sure that God will bless you that much more in return.

~ Talitha