The Other Side to Life
...pected poor, but nothing like this. The floors were dirt, the building constructed from rotted scrap wood with the odd sheet of corrugated iron. Yet what stunned the girls most of all were the children. They ran around wearing shabby, dirty clothing and playing with what looked like rubbish. The little girls had made what appeared to be necklaces, out of plastic bags. The boys were outside kicking a ball made from tied up material! It didn’t take long for the culture shock to kick in. Between the communication barrier, the accommodation of wooden beds and communal toilets, meals of plain rice and beans and the only electrical appliance being a single light bulb in each room. The first weeks were testing, but they slowly became more comfortable with their surroundings. As they rapidly absorbed the language things stated to change for them. The children sat in silence hanging on every word of their English lesson’s, this wasn’t something they were used to in Australia. In fact they began to realize these children possessed a sort of innocence which kids of the Western world were losing. These kids had nothing but their imaginations, no material possessions yet they were happier than the children who had everything right down to the latest computer game. As the months flew by they grew to love the kids, spending nearly all their spare time with them. They found the locals had a permanent air of relaxation about them. Rush hour involved the horse and carts of produce assembling in the main street on market day, not a two hour traffic jam on a six lane highway just to get home. They began to find it a place of complete tranquility where evenings were spent lazing ...