Giving Donations

After we sorted the donations, each of the children at the Ark were allowed to select a single pair of shoes. It was pandamonium, but everyone got a pair of shoes that they really wanted.

We gave away about three quarters of the donations while we were still in Africa. The rest will be given away by George and Anna Marie who are so generous I wouldn't be surprised if everything was gone within a week of our trip. We took a number of trips to the local community where we would load up the van and drive to a small village.
My favorite trip was to Kwakwas which was about 20km (12mi) on a dirt road then another 10km (6mi) on a single track rugged road. We had originally planned to visit a school, but the school had closed early and the teacher could not call us. We drove to a couple of small shanties where a group of 8-10 kids and a dozen or so adults greeted us with smiles. We opened the back of the van and began to give away cloths, school supplies, soccer balls (each child received a soccer ball) and shoes. I remember one lady really wanted a specific red shoe. I think she is the one in the red hat. This was later in the trip and we had a bunch of single shoes and we could not find a match. We felt really bad, but she really wanted it and was so thankful it broke our hearts. It wasn't until a little later that someone noticed that she had a prosthetic leg and really only needed one shoe. After everyone had their arms full, George told us they wanted to sing us a song. For the second time in the trip I stood in awe at the sound these people could produce. It was an amazing experience and the value of the gifts we had brought did not even come close to the value of that song.

Another way we gave away the donations was to bring a car load of kids from Blok-E to the Ark. We would load them up with cloths, school supplies and toys and drive them home.
I had the honor of driving some of these kids home one day and when we stopped the car to drop someone off all the kids unloaded. One of the Aunties tried to stop them so we could drive them a hundred yards further to to their house, but they just started walking. She told me that they wanted to show off the new clothes to the neighbors.