A trip to the zoo

They say you should never work with children and animals, but Claire and I threw caution to the wind on Monday, and took our 2 Wawa Wasi groups to the zoo! We'd been encouraged to take the Wawa Wasi children out if we could, and after the trip to the park the other day, clambering over dead dogs and only just surviving the crossing of the main road, we decided that a trip to the zoo in the CCS van might be a better option - and Gillian and Sara had done this a few weeks ago and survived!

So on Monday morning, with help from Katie, another volunteer, Alejandro and his van, we picked up the Wawa Wasi Mamas and children - 15 in total - and headed for the zoo. The trip itself was quite an experience - the children had never been to the zoo, but some of them had never been in a van before! There were 2 reactions - very bouncy excitement or tears - marshmallows helped the tears though, and excitement soon took over. We could probably just have driven round the city all morning - that would have been a treat in itself!

But we did get to the zoo, and lots of fun was had by all! It's only a small zoo, with mainly small animals, but it didn't matter - it was all very exciting. Even the model elephant was exciting ...



We stopped off at the children's playground part-way round for a milk break and a chance to let off steam, which was a good plan.



On the way back we had to climb back up a hill to the van, which was hard work for the 2-year-olds - and by the end some of us were really quite sleepy!



There were a few moments when we had to get hands out of cages, but 15 children had left the Wawa Wasis and 15 were returned!