Simon and I went to fill bottles for our trash fence at one of the local primary schools. I wanted to take some pictures of the kids working. But alas, when a kid in Africa sees a camera there is no such thing as candid working. I was engulfed in a sea of children. And in an attempt to salvage some photos, I continued to back up and keep snapping. Little did I know that the waste trench leading to the river from the school latrines was fast approaching and before I knew it I had fallen in. They immediately jumped back as I quickly pulled my foot out of the foot deep muck. I was jeered with chants of ‘sorry, sorry’ which were more reminiscent of mocks than apologies for allowing me to take the fall. Then there were the other kids who thought that it would be funny to poke the bear and make fun of the ‘stinky foot.’ That stopped pretty quickly after I picked up a perpetrator and dangled him over the trench for a minute or so.
That same afternoon some kids tried to use the bottles that we handed out as water bottles. Luckily they hadn’t thought things through and weren’t doing it sneakily. Already a little on edge I decided to punish them by making each kid I caught with water instead of trash drink the entire thing in front of me and then fill it with trash. I don’t think they realized the severity of the punishment until an hour later when they were sitting in class and weren’t allowed to leave for a bathroom break. That’ll teach ‘em.
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