Kidz Safari Preparations

This year's Kidz Safari was to be held on the 6th of June. It was a public holiday in Malaysia and this year there were 1119 children who registered for this event.

We, the committee had scheduled 4th and 5th June to set up the games stalls and to create a safari-like atmosphere in part of the church compound.

Since Rachel, who was one of the key players for this event, couldn't take time off at work to help with the preparation Aunt Chris and I had to work twice as hard. Rachel helped the weeks before by making sure that some of last year's games were still in good condition.

Yesterday, Aunt Chris went into the cabin to take out all the sticks and signboards for the games. It was a tedious task which no one wanted to do. Usually Rachel was the one who would search for things in this cabin.

The tents were set up on Wednesday and with the help of our church youths, the plywood animals were out of their "cage". We cut and painted the animals last year and this saved us a lot of time. Some of the youths helped with shredding the raffia string to create the green effect of the jungle.

The fishing net from last year's musical was used for tying the raffia strings on to it. Last year's Kidz Safari, we used 2 volleyball nets instead of the fishing net, but they got lost soon after the event.

My parents and a couple of youths helped with tying the fishing net onto the poles of the tent.

My father, who is a great help in any of our events, hung the SAFARI letterings up . Philip who saw that my dad needed an extra hand came to help.

This happened today. One of the church members was so kind to provide long sticks for us. These sticks were used as a support for the plywood animals. He was driving a pick-up truck and probably had forgotten that he had some sticks lying 45degrees, sticking out of his truck. He drove underneath the tent and the sticks got caught and pulled the tent down.

One of us called the tent provider and she came in the afternoon to inspect the damage. It cost us a lot extra for the damaged tent. :(

The youths were complaining about how boring this task was... shredding the raffia strings. Yesterday, I brought a half-used roll to do with Tusi, so that today the youths would have less to do. Today there were more youths and the task was completed in less than an hour.

Joy said that girls are better at this task because they always used their hands to run through their long tangled hair.

The older folks helped with diving the playcards and putting a number of them with each registration tags. Ai Ling came to sort of the gifts and Callista (who wasn't here to help) wrote the name of the games onto pieces of manila card boards.

I was worried when I called Frankie this morning. He was supposed to help us with putting up the animals and he was at the welfare department helping someone to get his monthly allowance from the government. He wasn't sure what time he would be back because his queue number was more than a hundred. He was there since 8.30am this morning and wasn't sure how long it would take for the officers to call out his number. Fearing that he would not make it back in time, (I had the same experience recently and I knew how long it could take to be stuck in the welfare department) I asked my dad to help out with the smaller animals.

I was so glad to see Frankie at 11.40am. He was all set to fix the main board. His son came to help him. They worked well together.

Some youths were in the office helping out with the gifts.


We had Judy trying out some games, testing to see if it was safe enough for the rest of the kids.

Rachel had food poisoning the day before and took medical leave today. In fact, she was sick for more than um... 7 days I think but she only took 1 day off on Tuesday. She was well on Wednesday, but had food poisoning yesterday. Knowing that she would die of boredom today, I told her to come only when we were about to finish. So at 4pm, I told her that she could come to church and probably help in one or two things.

At 5.40pm, we were all set for the next day.