Saturday, the YAVs traveled across town to a part of Nairobi called Dandora for our cross-cultural experience with all seven YAVs.  We went to a Saturday program that is run at a church for the children in Dandora.  Dandora is home to Nairobi's enormous trash dump which is where some of the children live.  We had reading time, porridge time, movie time (Moses part II), lunchtime, and game time.  The day began with reading time where the seven of us split up and helped kiddos read.  My friend, George, could read better than I could in first grade, but didn't know what some of the words meant so we mainly worked on definitions.  It was during reading time that I met my friend for the day, Nevada.  Nevada is one and a half-ish years old and walked up to me while I was helping George and started playing with my watch and arm hair.  Then the rest of the day wherever I went Nevada was right beside me.  He was the coolest kid ever.  It was amazing to watch him during porridge time and lunch being self-sufficient at his age.  He got in line carried his porridge over to where they sit and sat down and drank it all.  Then he got up and brought his empty cup over to the sink to be washed.  Later in the day, when we had lunch he once again impressed me by getting his food walking over and sitting down and then this was really cool.  This one and a half year old-ish kid saw my empty plate sitting next to me and picked it up and took it with him to the sink to be washed.

Nevada and I:


I named him Nevada because when I asked him his name in Swahili he wouldn't answer me and he was wearing a sweater that said Nevada across the front.  So, we never spoke a word the entire day except for me telling him I didn't understand him and him not understanding that, but still we hung out for four hours and I missed him when we left.  We all piled back in the van and headed back to the other side of town to create more trash for the trash dump sadly.

Porridge Time: