Swim Party and more Teddies for the BTN Kids!

I have never been very good when sleep-deprived and I am certainly not getting enough sleep at BTN with the early starts and a sick bed-fellow. Tom is on the mend but still waking in the night.
However, it is a privilege as a mother to be able to care for a sick child. It is the older girls at BTN that look after the younger ones at night or when they are sick. That is hard on a teenager, and some have to get up in the night to be able to get their homework done as well. It must be harder on the children to be sick and not to have a mother's love to comfort.

The days at BTN now seem to merge into a continual sequence of routine, heat, noise, work, interspersed by the different flavours of what is on the menu, rehearsals for concerts and performances or the occasional visitors that come to look, donate or buy from the shop. I feel as though we are in a time warp, that this has been our reality for a long long time and yet so aware that it will all soon be over.

 I got the boys painting today. I want Gean (who happens to be a very good artist) to do some paintings that we print on cards, t-shirts or tea towels for fundraising. He was very keen to paint his depiction of the Boxing day Tsunami, even though he would only have been 2 years old at the time. This year is the 10 year anniversary and the memories still define so much of what happens in this region, even though the scars are slowly healing.

The evening dinner was particularly wonderful. I had taken up my place on the kitchen floor during the morning to help make chicken larb, cutting up sawtooth coriander, lemongrass, coriander, and limes. The afternoon crew cleaned a huge bowl of mussels that were made into tiny mussel fritters, cooked over a charcoal fire outside the back door by the teenage girls. My kids loved them and had third helpings!

 The afternoon was awaited by keen anticipation by the children at BTN. There was to be a swim party at Le Meridian. They open the children's pool at this luxury 5-star resort to all the kids at BTN who splashed and played all afternoon in the pool and water slide. The owners of Le Meridian are great supporters of the work of Hands Across The Water, having lost one of their own daughters in the Tsunami.

After dinner we finally were able to hand out the main batch of Teddies to the older children. Hannah, Tom and Meg were concerned that the older children and teenagers would not be interested in the toys, but how wrong could they be. Khun Rotjana lined up everyone in the hall before prayers and explained to the children about the fundraising and Tag a Teddy campaign that my Kiwi Kids had undertaken to get here. They had collected about 300 Teddies and about $700 in donations with beautiful messages of love and support. I was very proud of their efforts and I think, this evening, they finally understood the purpose of the trip and the small difference that one can make to a life.

The smiles and excitement tell the story. There were no arguments or upsets about who got which Teddy. The BTN children are so grateful and look after each other first before themselves. It is amazing to watch.

The surplus Teddies that we have will be sent to the boys and girls at the New Life project that is also supported by HATW.