Terrible Two Crew

Guinea Bissau is in no short supply of children. In fact, there are days when we feel like all the children in Guinea Bissau are in our yard. That of course cannot be true, but there are typically a lot of children that hang out in our yard all day.  One group of children that might think they live at our house would be a group of two and three year olds from our neighbors house.  They are cute and adorable…but so are puppies.

Could you imagine having a two or three year old and then leaving them at home alone all day while you go do your work? That is what happens to the kids that hang out in our yard, their family goes to work in the cashew orchard while they are left to themselves, so naturally, they come to our yard. Our kids lovingly named them the Terrible Two Crew. They act just like any two or three year old would that never gets disciplined and is left to his own accord.

Often, we offer lunch to our little friends. It is difficult to eat our lunch with little hungry eyes watching and so eager to join. They are always happy with whatever we give them.  They enjoy my "American" cooking as well.  (I added quotation marks because it's not truly American cooking without the American ingredients…it's just as close as I can make it for my family)

Michael is adding a fence in our yard to block off the back of the house to visitors.  He was putting in fence post and had two little helpers come along and help pack the dirt around the post.  Michael enjoyed these two helpers. 

Since the kids are at our house all day we invite them to join us and our children in our daily chores.  In this picture they are helping us to carry our bath water. They were so happy we got little cups for them to use to carry water. 

One day while we were drawing our shower water (this takes a significant amount of time to draw for a family of seven), Michael decided to dump a bucket on the kids that had gathered around the well waiting for empty buckets.  The joy on Sana Mane's face is priceless.  It wasn't shortly after this picture that all the kids stripped their clothes off (well those adorable white kids kept their shorts on) and were begging for more water.  

I just couldn't not add this picture into this blog.  This is the old fashioned water sprinkler.  On a hot day, it's worth the work of drawing a bucket just to dump it a group of excited children.  

As cashew season is coming to an end, our terrible two crew is starting to get smaller.  We said goodbye to one of Micah's best friends, Sally, the other day.  She went to be with her mother (she did not live with her mother, but her grandparents), but some day she will be coming back.