This past Thursday Ashley and I got to bring our little baby girls that we teach to the house for a night of fun. On Tuesday I visited each of their homes to ask permission for them to spend the night. In America this process would be a little more difficult: I would have to explain where we were going, who would be there, what we would do, when they would come home. But here in Swaziland, without any information, the parents immediately gave us permission to take their kids. On Thursday, when we arrived to the care point, the girls were dressed in their best clothes and had packed their backpacks that we gave them. Having never been to town before, the kids were ridiculously excited when we got on the kombi to start our adventure. We sat with multiple kids on our laps in order to save on bus fares. Many of the kids gasped as we turned into the bus ranks because they had never seen anything like it. Walking through town was crazy, and many people shouted at us in Siswati, wondering if we had stolen the kids!! We took them to KFC (the best place ever to Swazis) to get ice cream, which they were surprised to find out was COLD!!
It was times like this that we really got to see how much this all meant to ‘our’ sweet girls. We brought them to the house, where we had a new stuffed dog, pictures that we printed, and a pair of underwear set out in little piles for each one. They had us strap their new doggies to their backs, just as the Swazi moms strap babies to theirs and of course, I joined in the fun with my teddy Fred!
They went crazy over a lot of things in the house such as the stairs, using a toilet and the bunk beds. We had a great bubble bath time before bed that the girls LOVED. It was so fun to play with them and get them really clean for once, plus they were ridiculously cute in those bubbles.
