26th September - Our Last Full Day

We woke up this morning to the sound of singing. It was a slow start with our first thing being breakfast served to us by Matrida. She is so wonderful and has a number of jobs here at Home of Hope including looking after those working at the maize mill.

We went to see the girls hostel at 9:30am and met the two matrons who are full of energy.

We were able to see the damaged mattresses - the ones that Malawi Orphan Fund hadn’t replaced.

Thanks to friends from St John’s and St Leonard’s Church Bedford, we have been able to provide 60 new mattresses.

On leaving the house of Break Dance (Girls hostel), we ran into some of the girls on their school breaks. They decided to sing for us. (Find the video on Facebook soon).

From there we went to see 2 of the house mother’s houses, UK house and Japan House. Children who are under 10 years of age live in these houses and each room has 4-5 children in it. For the very young children under 6 years old the house mother sleeps in the same room as them.

Once the children are slightly older 11/12 years old they move onto Korea house or another house. Here they still have a house mother but they learn how to take care of them selves and wash their own clothes etc. once they know how to do this around 14 years age, they move up to one of the hostels.

We then rested until after lunch when a tidal wave of children came to the guest house to write letters.

It was wonderful to witness the children from Standard 5 to 8 helping each other as some were confident and others didn’t know where to start.

Straight after this we went to the Boma to purchase mattresses (pictures to follow tomorrow). At the same time we picked up our dresses and shirts from the tailor - who was very excited to have his photo taken.

We finished our day sharing dinner with Matrida and Carolyn and it was wonderful. We ate in silence sometimes but the sort of silence you get in a family dinner and not awkward at all.

we are going to miss these ladies!

More tomorrow as I sit at the airport about Cynthia, our dresses and the mattresses.

We are going to miss Home of Hope!

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