We met at 8 o'clock, there was a group of eight of us that had signed up to go. Our fearless leader was Rosie Timms, a good friend of mine sine I've come to the ship, who has already been helping this family. She sent out an e-mail to her supporters a few weeks back and they had raised the money to fix a few things on the house; put on a back door, patch a few wholes in the roof, put stucco on the walls, and put some covering on the floors. Since all of this work was being done she made a sign-up to see if any of the crew would want to but a gallon of paint and help paint the house. Five of us ended up buying a some paint and she got some equipment: two small paint rollers and two small small paint brushes.
Clinton, an approved Land Rover driver, had signed up to get a vehicle that day so we all piled in and made ourselves comfortable for the journey to the house. Rosie was the only one that had been there before so it was a journey for the rest of us. We made it through the traffic in the city and when we got about ten miles out of town we started up a pretty large hill. When we got to the point that the path was smaller than the vehicle we stopped to see the amazing view from where we would be working.From on top of this hill you could see the river and quite a ways past it, probably the best view I've seen since I've gotten to Sierra Leone. There at that point Rosie had planned for a man to meet us and lead us up to the house. Once we got out of the vehicle the children started coming. At first there were only two or three but by the time we got to the house there were probably ten or more.
The house isn't much to speak of, just three rooms that the family live in and then another room (which we didn't go in) that they rent out to somebody else. We got to work pretty much right away, using a few random plastic containers that we had brought from the ship for paint trays. A few people outside and a few people inside. Before we knew it we were out of paint. with only half of it painted outside and a room still left to get painted inside. With it only being somwhere around 11o'clock we sent somebody back into town to get two more gallons of paint, because that's all the money we had on us. ( Yeah, hard to imagine, but we don't really carry much with us when we leave the ship) We knew it would be over an hour for the paint to get back so we started entertaining the twenty or so kids that had gathered to watch the white people paint.
That's when I got to pick my camera up and get some good shots. As you can see in this picture on the left, the kids picked up our tools as soon as we sat them down ( think they just wanted to be like us). With not many options of entertainment we started by playing some basic Simon says and then did a very basic ad hoc puppet show with our paint rags.
After about thirty minutes of entertaining kids that only understand about half of our language they decided to show us down the road where there is a creek that runs through. They had told us when we arrived that Saturday was the day that they do their brooking (krio for laundry). As we walked down the path we could see where the creep was and the spot that they were doing the wash. 
When we first arrived they were fast at work. Many kids and some of the mothers getting their work done. Just a few minutes later when they realized that there were some white people standing there watching them the kids took the first chance to goof off and started jumping and playing in the water
We made it back up to the main path and soon heard that our paint had arrived. After less than an hour we had finished all that we could with the supplemental paint and began to get things ready to eat. Rosie had told us the day before that when we packed our lunch to bring a few extra sandwiches because she knew that the kids would be there when we ate and didn't want them to have to watch us eat. Rosie and I sat down and started cutting them in half to make sure that each kid got some and then we even had enough to pass them all around again. A few people had brought some hard-boiled eggs and the family was very happy to see them. So with the eight of us from the ship we had at least twenty-five sandwiches! After getting all of the lunch cleaned up and giving the family the extra food that was left over the grandma burst out in song. Praising God she sang "Tell Papa God Tɛnki " (thank you) a very popular Krio song here in Sierra Leone.
