A Neighborhood of Children

 

How would you like to live in a neighborhood of 56 children and teenagers, more children than teenagers?  Well that is my neighborhood.  At almost any time from 6:30am to 7:30 pm you can hear the sound of children playing, the squeak of the swings on the swing set.  You can see children riding bicycles and playing with old car tires – running beside them as they are pushed along.  You can hear children singing, mostly laughter but an occasional cry.

 

In front of our house, on the other side of our circular drive is a pile of old road tar that we hope to use at some point.  Right now the children refer to it as the black hill.  It is a favorite place to sit and do things, or to ride up and down on the bikes.  The other day Joshua, our youngest, brought the little tricycle we have.  The older kids helped him up the black hill, and then it went rushing down.  I thought he was going to tip over. 

 

Kamau has taken a few bikes out of the containers for the children.  These bikes rotate from one house to another.  The children do a wonderful job of sharing and also helping new kids learn how to ride.  We limit the number of bikes we have for a couple of reasons.  One is that it is important for the children to learn to share.  Secondly, if we had too many we would have a great number of crashes and the roads would look like the LA freeway!