Dec 27 2008
Visiting the Orphanage
Last weekend we took a trip with a few of the other Embassy staff to an orphanage. The children in this orphanage are older. Many were from the Malate area which is closer to our location but they lost the lease on the building so they have moved them to another longer term facility. These children were either living on the streets, or with abusive families. The location we visited houses girls and young boys. A nearby facility is where the older boys live. There were close to 50 children who live in these two small locations but they are all very happy polite children. When we arrived, they told us we would have our program on the roof. It was a rather warm day and the house has no air conditioning so the roof was a better option. I wish I had the camera on Johnnie to have captured the look on his face when he realized he needed to take his bass up the winding stair case and a couple of the children had grabbed hold of the bottom of the bag to help him out. He’s a little on the protective side of his instrument since he had it custom made for him, but he did ok and the instrument made it safely up the flights of stairs.
The children did a Christmas musical program for us which was really a tough act to follow. Johnnie and one of his coworkers played some Christmas music for everyone afterwards. Johnnie plays the double bass and his coworker plays the Ukelele. It was their first time playing together in public but they did a good job and the kids enjoyed it.
I’m adding a picture of Johnnie with the bass. The one of the two guys together was to blurred to add. There’s also a picture of some of the kids watching them play.
