Saturday 27th March

The problem with painting pink paint on pink walls in bright sunlight is that it’s difficult to spot the bits you’ve missed. But that’s the colour of the girl’s house, so we found ourselves dipping our rollers into trays of the stuff first thing this morning. Some of the children joined in and made a mess of the floor next to one of the staircases. I managed to surpass their clumsy accidents by tilting my tray at the wrong angle. By the time I’d seen it, half my paint had trickled along a walkway. I tried to mop it up but there was so much of it, the cloth was just pushing the liquid further down the path so I decided to leave it where it was. So there’s now a small part of the Philippines that’s pink thanks to me.

This afternoon Ian and I played games with the boys. Having heaved a cricket bat a third of the way around the world in my suitcase, I managed to knacker it out without it ever hitting a ball as I used it as a hammer to pin down the stumps. Then the red tennis ball that came with the kit burst within a couple of minutes of us starting playing. So although we struggled on with our game for a few more minutes, it was obvious that the kids were looking to do something else. They wanted to play football, so we marched down the hill to pick up a new ball.

We played in the small playing area next to the boy’s house. As I’d suspected, it was a little small to have any kind of real game. We started by playing with the older boys. By far the most confident is a 15-year-old lad called Randy. He was one of the first to start chatting up Saskia and Becky yesterday. Today he was making fun of Ian from early on and predictably during the game, he was the child who thought he could dribble round everyone. Most of the boys played in bare feet or sandals but Randy was different. As we kicked off, I noticed that he’d put a screw-studded football boot on his left foot. I assumed he’d been slow finding the other one but as the game continued, I realised that one was all he’d got. But he was proud enough of that one wet-weather boot to wear it on a hard rocky surface. One of the helpers told Ian that the younger boys are among the best in their local league. But none of them had any kind of kit and although there was a Leeds United shirt hanging up to dry, it dawned on me that none of the hand-me-downs that the children are given provide them with the kind of sports kit that would help them play. Ian and I both came away from the game wondering how much the boys had got out of it. The older ones especially are far quieter than I’d expected. They only celebrated one of the goals. The rest of the time they just seemed to be getting on with it. The younger boys were a little more excitable, although they were far more interested in the two of us picking them up and throwing them over our shoulders.

This evening we switched camps and went to play with the girls. I brought ten numbered pads that connect together to form a game of hopscotch. The younger kids were falling over each other to rearrange the squares by putting different numbers in different places. Then they launched themselves from one pad to the next with huge leaps and big thumps as they came crashing down. One girl had a moody, concentrated look on her face the entire time she was playing. She had big innocent eyes and a bobbed haircut that kept falling across her eyes. As she landed she’d squeal with delight, then look hard for the next number before repeating the exercise. Their energy gradually weakened as the evening wore on. By the end younger ones especially were more interested in cuddling or colouring in. We packed up and said goodnight.