Our playground

At SOS Chai we love to play games as part of the evenings. We have colourful tables scattered around and after we've served the meal we play games.
My personal favorite is Jenga, always amazes me that such a simple game can be such fun! Tonight one of the boys loved to tease us with the word “tomber, tomber, tomber” (which means fall in French) when it looked close to falling! I don't know this lad that well but it was such fun to just play, and laugh together. Others played cricket, enjoying the new bats generously donated by Falmouth cricket club. They are bringing so much joy! Another table was laughing loudly as they played Uno together. I think there was some volleyball happening too!
This is our colourful playground, temporarily set up twice weekly amongst the debris of our side of the Presqu’île.
The aim is to create a splash of joy & welcome as we simply play games & make friends. Occurs to me that it's not so different from school days, just a grown up version, where the big kids have seen far too much violence already, & probably shed far too many tears, said too many goodbyes to loved ones fearing they will never meet again. Maybe the playground is helping more than we know, to build connections where loneliness has taken its toll, but best of all to provide a place to come week by week where you can just put down the hard work of re building your life in a completely alien environment & simply play for a while.”