Tuesday 6 January 2015

Plenty of shopping to do today! We are cooking lunch for the students...pumpkin Dahl curry and rice. So we bought onions, garlic, curry powder, Dahl and rice as well as a cooker which is like a concrete ring that you build a fire in. 

Great way to cook...no power at Blah Toh! So we chopped carrot on a hunk of wood and cut up pumpkin on a long saw horse with knives that looked like machetes. The soldiers at the border had given us about 8 pumpkins. 

As we fed 24 children with one large pumpkin, the teacher will have food for ages, as we also bought too much Dahl! We sautéed the garlic and onion then added 6 huge spoons of chilli powder (this was for the children not us!) threw in the pumpkin and carrots and enough water to cover. We made a gigantic pot and only had one bowl left.

I couldn't believe how much these kids eat! Even the three yr olds ate 2 cups of rice and nearly 2 cups of curry. Some of the older children had two serves...I couldn't have even finished one of the serves that we gave the kids. 

Then they took their plates and washed and dried them...without even being asked...well trained!

We had some tempura batter so we dipped bananas and green papaya and fried them for an afternoon treat for the children. 

While we were cooking, Jan and the teacher sorted out all the clothes that we had brought over and gave them to the children. Of course they all tried them on!

Hopefully one day the school we be able to grow enough vegetables to have lunch at school. The vege garden is looking good. That was one of the projects we organized, but first they had to build a fence to keep the animals out!

We see several of these "trucks" around. This is how we crossed the river border last time to go to Karen New Year. They hook up a tractor engine and a large steel A-frame to the wheels and put some timber slats on the back.  The driver pushes the A-frame left or right to steer. If he wants to make a sharp left or right he has to hop off and push the A-frame all the way out! It looks so funny but it is very practical especially in the rainy season!

Again, the children didn't want to go home so about 4:30 we bundled them all into the back of the truck to take them for the short ride to the end of their road! They get so excited about the smallest things!!

We had a horrible nights sleep. The walls are paper thin...you can actually see the light from next door through the timber cracks in the wall. Next door had their TV on until 2am. You could actually hear the ice clinking in their drinks as they drank.