Thursday was our last day in Machakos and also school closing day for the term. That morning, we both woke up at 5:00 AM to go to the bathroom. Earlier that week, we had learned the reason for the daily morning stampede past our room. Every morning the cook heats water for the girls to use to bathe, but only enough for about 8 girls. So every morning, once the house mother opens the gate, all the girls race eachother to the kitchen for the hot water. As we walked downstairs,we heard the sound of dozens of girls running towards us and suddenly we saw one girl zoom past us,closely followed by ten more girls. We excitedly cheered them all on, trying to identify who was in the top eight. It was a great start to our last day with the girls.
On closing day, a special meal is prepared, complete with chapati,ndazi,stew and rice. The older girls spent all morning in the kitchen cutting vegetables, rolling chapati dough and deep frying ndazi. With the only other girls in the kitchen who werent cooking, Felista(4 years old) and nDunge(5), we watched Betty and Vivian fry chapati and Lucy and Wendy cut up huge slabs of beef. The school closing ceremony was held at 1:00. The teachers, counselors and visitors sat at a long table atoo the stage looking down at the girls seated facing the stage. It felt strange sitting above them, as if we were their authorities, when we felt more like their friends. During the ceremony, the teachers called up each class and ranked every girl, giving each a prize( a wash-cloth and a pen). They even ranked the nursery and the special-ed class. We were so proud to see that all of our closest friends were called as the 1st and 2nd in their class. Looking down and seeing all of their faces and knowing it was the last day we would see them made us very emotional. None of the girls had ever seen us cry and it made them very upset and emotional themselves. After the ceremony, there were two hours when all of the girls were really depressed. We felt bad because our unhappiness had caused theirs and we didnt want to spend our last day with them moping. After a couple sad hours our attempts to cheer them up finally worked. We spent the rest of the day singing, laughing and taking lots of silly pictures.
To lighten our suitcases we had decided to give some of our clothes away to the girls. We brought some of our closest friends, Nancy, Betty, Lillian and Vivian, into our room so that they could take some of the clothes we were getting rid of. They all excitedly sifted through the pile, trying on several different outfits. We'd never seen them wearing anything other than their uniforms and it made us so happy to see how ecstatic they were to try on all the new clothes. At one point, Lillian put on a pair of khaki pants, a flowered shirt, oversized hiking boots, and a safari hat. The sight of her in the outfit was so hilarious and even better was the excitement in her eyes to be wearing that outfit. While they were trying on our old clothes, we put on their uniforms and held a little fashion show.
In all of the excitement we mistakenly locked the keys inside our room as we left. We had been so careful about preventing this from happening since the first day because to our knowledge, there are no spare keys to our room. We desperately brainstormed ways to get back into our room . When we asked Catherine if she knew a way to break in to the dorm, which is a cement building with metal doors and barred windows, she immediately climbed up to the window and tried to squeeze through the four-by-four inch space between the bars. We had a large audience at this point, and realizing our dilemna, they all started to lift up the smallest girls and shove them through the bars. Finally Faith Shiru, an eight-year old who is incredibly skinny, walked by and everyone cheered as Ann Mbuela grabbed her arm, lifted her up to the window and successfully pushed her through the four-by-four inch space.
Joseph arrived at seven pm to pick us up and we spent an hour saying goodbye to the girls. Its impossible to put into words how sad and difficult that hour was, and it still hasnt hit us that every morning we wont be woken up to the sound of the girls racing for hot water.
