Playing in the river

There are many things that I think our kids will treasure from growing up in Mali. One of those things, most likely, will be rain. It only rains during the months of May through October (with an occasional rain in April). Rainy days are like snow days. Everything stops. No one goes out except the crazy white people. We run outside, sit on our porch and the boys take turns running out in the rain. And of course, there are always cups of hot chocolate.

When our gate blew open from a rain, Dawson ran out to close it and saw our street had turned into a flowing river. So of course he wanted to play in it. Being the "great" mother I am, I of course let my son play in the middle of the street, trying not to think of all the body fluids and various other unclean things floating down the street.

The other two soon came out and played as well. Kenan lost his shoe and it started floating down the street so then they enjoyed playing with the "boat." After the shoe went further than Kenan thought safe, he refused to put his shoe at risk of floating away anymore. We decided to use leaves as our boats which were quite faster than the shoe. Finally Dawson caught his leaf a good distance down the street and said, "I'm glad there's trash on the roads. The trash caught my leaf. Without the trash my leaf would have been gone." So I guess the trash is good for something. :)