brooking clothes in Looking Town

Sister Neves, Peter, Ali, and a few other young men found ourselves in Looking Town one fine afternoon a few weeks ago. We stopped by Musu Sillah's home to teach little Adama and Kadi and a half dozen other fine little ones who live in the little home without doors or windows under the mango tree. (Adama Sillah 9 years old - baptized in December 2010 - we baptized her Mama Musu a month earlier)

It was as a breath of fresh air to sit there for an hour and teach a little and watch Sister Neves do the thing she loves to do best or second best after reading, which is to teach. (Peter Vandi Bassie Jr. is staring at me taking the picture- Kadiatu, daughter of Musu 7 years old is next to Peter - then a little neighborhood girl, Sister Neves, Musu with her damaged head partially hidden, Ali Kamara just baptized son of the Muslim Gibril has his hand on his head, Joseph with the crutch came by to visit, he's a member but doesn't attend always, and finally Abdul who's family is all Muslim. Musu and the rest of the extended family live in the home you see in the background.)

We then moved on to Isata a little further down the mountain to visit with the little mother of twins. 

While there I noticed a little scene being played out that was too good to pass up. Peter is always telling me, Elder Neves you're not a tourist. He reads the white bible if Sister Neves doesn't. (These four year old girls were totally unaware of the fact that we were interested in what they were doing. They were simply washing their clothes an hanging them up to dry. Their Momma had gone to the market to get some food for them all, rice, fish, and probably some peppers or potato leaves. Maybe she went to do a little bit of selling of something or another.

These little girls barely able to take care of themselves were doing the brooking absolutely by themselves without any adult supervision besides us tourists looking on in the background.

Once the sweethearts observed us watching and taking pictures it became a little bit more staged and the kids enjoyed the whole idea of performing. Most of the scene played itself out with the children being totally unaware that they were being watched. 

There is nothing quite as constant as the satisfaction of watching and photographing little children here in Africa. The little black faces lend do all the work themselves. These little girls saw us teaching and taking photos and wanted in on the action. I kind of staged them to pile up a little and look around the corner. They were all just coming back from school in their various uniforms.

This little one just felt like posing for us. She also was involved in the clothes washing. I'll try to get some names of the children in the pictures from now on. This is probably Aminata or Fatmata or Fatima or Mary or Isata all commonly used names.