Twister!!!

No I’m not talking about a tornado but the game: Twister. My parents brought it with them to give to the project. We introduced it during the Saturday Program at the office. During the Saturday Program, children come to play and socialize with one another. They play soccer, jump rope, sing, and play other local games. Well, the kids knew that we brought something with us because our plastic bags were bulging—we pumped up new soccer balls & volleyballs then broke out the new game. It was great as no one (including the social workers) had seen a game like this before—in fact manufactured games have almost never been seen. So I explained in my crude Amharic and stretched myself across the dotted playing map. Then we drew a big circle in the dirt around the mat and chose 6 kids to enter the circle and play the first round. It was loud and crazy and nearly impossible to choose children to play. But we did and they played and it was great.

Explaining the new game

We’ve also got some new games at the projects that some previous groups brought. Just last week I had the opportunity to distribute the games with the social workers. We talked about the importance of play for development and socialization then we played each of the new games ourselves. It was fun to have the social workers acting like kids as we played twister, uno, and memory. Now all the games have been divided up between our 5 sites but we still don’t have enough—as we’ve got 5 sites and 2,000 kids in the program.

This is where you come in!!! Please send us more games. My number one request is for Memory—it’s a great game that needs little explanation or supervision but is good for all ages. Here’s the list:

• Memory
• Uno
• Twister
• Cards
• Crayons
• Connect 4

You can send them to:

Kristen Damron

PO Box 470

Ziway, Ethiopia

*you can take memory & twister out of the box & put them in a plastic bag to save on shipping weight.

Thanks…. From the Project Kids!!!