Greetings!
I have these two kids, aged around 4 or 5 years, who always come around whenever they see me. I like them, even though they often violate the rules I give them, such as not using the water tap in the compound, where they end up wasting water or not packing sands to my workplace. Yes, they're children that love to play with sand a lot
On the particular day I took this photo, a guy and I were working on reconstructing a table into a cupboard for use in a kitchen. Because the work involved dropping nails on the ground, we decided to shift to a corner to avoid children coming close and risking a nail injury. But no way, when these two boys saw us in the corner, they came to play in the area. I had to stop what I was doing to shout and caution them about walking around, but did they listen to me? No way! They were adamant and started carrying the hammers to construct their own houses too.
There I was, staying close to them to make sure they didn't have an accident. One was carrying the small hammer, and it was funny how he used both hands to carry it, looking as if it was as heavy as Thor's hammer. Lol.
Seeing the situation, I had to walk around and make sure there were no nails on the ground. But how clean could I guarantee it was? Well, I tried to check properly and cleaned the ground as best as I could.
When I left the scene to attend to some work, I handed over the responsibility of looking after the kids to the carpenter, making sure they didn't go too close to the exact spot where the work was being done. If by mistake they got pierced by a nail, their mom would never hesitate to shout at us, not knowing that we had tried our best to keep them away. I stayed away for about 2 hours, and when I returned, I saw the children at a completely different corner, building houses with sand.
I was surprised and asked the guy how he got them to leave the scene. He told me that I had been too soft with them, which is why they kept flocking around. He said he shouted at them, carried them to the corner himself, and gave them some plastic containers to play with the sand. And that was it.
Wow! That was superb. Funny enough, we were able to finish the carpentry work without them coming around to disturb us. It was as if they found their hit spot and loved it.
It didn't end there. After the work, I bought some snacks for the carpenter and also for the kids, and they loved it. Oh yeah, they were part of the work, weren't they? They kept us engaged with their talks and shouts. Lol
Thank you for reading.
This is an entry to Day 20 of #julyinleo
All photos are mine