street children

Samuel and Shawn 

Today we went shopping at the strip of markets/shops we had gone to before.  I was in search of traditional dresses for all of our girls as well as some other items I had forgotten on our first trip.  Laurie and I teamed up and attacked this bartering process with great confidence.  By the end of our excursion, however, the shop owners had worn Laurie and I down!  The whole haggling thing is exhausting!  It makes you appreciate a set price--ha!!!  Shawn and I brought some shoes again this trip, but this time we wanted to give them to the street children we had met on our last trip.  Samuel was on young boy who Shawn was particularly fond of.  He begged Shawn to bring him to America--oh it breaks our hearts!  As a result of this boy, we made it one of our goals to find him on our second trip and give him shoes and some other things.  When we got off the bus to go shopping, we saw Samuel right away.  He came over immediately and hugged us, shook our hands and called us by name!  There are many security guards patroling this area and one of their responsibilities is to keep the street kids and beggars away from the shoppers.  Unfortunately, one of the guards saw Samuel with us and we later saw her smack him across the face and hit him in the stomach with her stick.   The other young girl in the photo tries to sell sticks of gum to the shoppers for some money.  I think she was asking for less than five cents a piece--so sad!  These kids have nothing--I mean NOTHING!  They cannot go to school as they have no money and there are no jobs for them to earn money.  It is hard to understand the why, so we will try to wrap our brains what can we do for this group of young people that would help make their lives a little easier.  I will keep you posted with any projects that we come up with in the future.