Christmas 2009 at the Rift Valley Children's Village

Don and Tom and several of us at the village drove to neighboring villages to distribute gifts to all of the children (organized chaos!)

Cleaning of the Rec Hall by the kids!

New Pajamas for all - Taringire House with Bonnie and Don some of my favorite volunteers ever!

Wow, what a week! I cannot believe the planning and all of the preparation it takes to get ready for Christmas here at the village! First was decorating the trees. Each house has a tree with ornaments and stockings. The two new houses have never had Christmas before and were not quite sure why we were making such a fuss about a silly tree.

After Santa has arrived!

Next came the wrapping of presents. We have 82 staff and each one received a Bonnie Raitt t-shirt (generously donated from her last tour) and hat. We then gave the children of all of the staff presents. Each of our children receives two presents and a stocking that is filled with goodies.

Christmas Program in the rec hall

On Christmas Eve, each child receives a gift of pajamas, we put out a cookie for Santa and then they try and stay awake to see him. Christmas morning is total chaos with the opening of presents and the search for batteries! This year several of the older children really understood what Christmas is all about and made or bought gifts for some of the other children.

Preparing lunch

After breakfast, everyone goes to the rec hall for church. Then the frantic setup for lunch and the official program takes place. All of the kids get dressed in their new Christmas outfits, the mamas are cooking and the volunteers and running around looking for batteries and trying to put together all of the toys.

Fried Bananas

We all gather in the rec hall and each house performs a song. It was very cute and special and pretty hysterical regarding the musical choices, but great fun. We ended the program with lunch in the rec hall with everyone sitting on the floor or benches and a huge mess was made by all! Over all a great and very satisfying day. I will say it took me 3 days to recover from the pre-Christmas week activities, 69 kids is a lot more work than 3 kids, that is for sure! It was truly wonderful to be able to share and experience this day with these children. I love it here!