On the last day of the building project at the medical clinic in Tikeet and having just finished the painting, the team sat down to eat a late lunch. Whenever we are at the clinic, locals gather to see what is going on, in particular children who are not at school. Eating in front of them is always difficult, so we try to do it out of view. On this occasion, because all of the floors had just been painted, we could not hide away in one of the rooms so were in full view of the watching children.

As always, feeling guilty, the team decided to share out the 6 mini bananas we had been given as part of lunch. We estimated that there were about 12 children, so cutting the bananas in half would be enough to give them all something to eat. We asked one of the local helpers to line the children up; however, instead of 12 there were now 34! Time to turf out the backpacks for anything else we had with us. Fortunately, Yellowman Pat had a selection of breakfast cereal bars which were duly chopped into thirds. A plate was filled with the items and handed round to the children who had all waited patiently in line.

About thirty minutes later we were taking photos and noticed that one little girl was still clutching her banana, nibbling small pieces off at a time to make it last. The amount she had been given was the equivalent of an adult mouthful when eating a standard size banana!

As people at home go about their daily business they perhaps sometimes forget how lucky they are, something the Yellowmen no longer take for granted.

Yellowman Tony