SIMONGA VILLAGE

This village is governed by an older woman who settles any problems that arise and also who divides up and assigns pieces of property to families. The families live in small compounds - a hut for the parents, a hut for the daughters and one for the sons. Their property is fenced off by hedges or fences. Most had plants and flowers outside their huts. Accommodations are small but most of their time is spent outdoors and I must say, they all seemed happy.

From our camp at Toka Leya, we visited a local village which the camp partly sponsors. It's a natural village, nothing phony or put-on about it (like some we've heard of). We were welcomed by everyone and a group of children followed us everywhere.




The young man in the white/orange T-shirt told me that he was a soccer player and on the village team ... then he said they didn't have a soccer ball anymore. My sister is a big fan of soccer so I mentioned it to her and she gave our guide the money to buy three soccer balls for the boys and three netballs for the girls (girls' basketball).




Here's me, Mary and Babs with a bunch of the kids ... they loved having their photos taken and were just happy to walk around with us - and hold hands of course.






Just me wandering around when somebody snapped my picture.









Another walkabout shot with two village girls in the foreground. See the little boy in the yellow shirt, holding my hand? Well, he held onto me for a long time ... and he was such a cute little guy.






He did let go of my hand long enough for me to get this photo of him and then someone else grabbed me and he moved on to another hand.








This little girl was eating a raw potato and seemed quite happy with it. We gave our guide (who lives in the village) some chewing gum packages and the kids went wild .. he ended up halving each piece so most of them would get some. The little girl looked much happier with gum.





This child apparently had never seen a white person, so when my sister went inside his hut to have a look at it, he started screaming and ran outside. He didn't calm down until we moved on. Another young child who was being given a piggyback by his older sister, reached out and very gently stroked my cheek - I don't think he'd seen a white person either.






There was some work going on in the village - toilets were being dug and this house was being framed. It had taken a month to get the outside frame secured.





We saw some ladies fixing each other's hair and then we spotted this man who was having his head closely shaved.












Here are the occupants of one of the huts we looked in.









We saw two vegetable 'stands' as we walked through the village. They grow potatoes and tomatoes and other veggies.









When we walked back to our car, the kids followed and sang us a song before we left. They were adorable.








Here are two of the singers - we went away after having our eyes opened and with a feeling of goodwill. We are all putting together 'care packages' for the villagers.