Nail Polish

On my last trip I took over to Kenya with my parents I had had my toenails and fingernails painted.  The little kids had thought that this was pretty cool and would constantly touch it.  They were amazed when it wouldn’t rub off on them.  I still remember one afternoon Lydia had come up to me with a huge smile on her face and held out her hand for me to see.  To my surprise she had colored her fingernails purple (the same color of nail polish I had used).  I asked the teacher how she did it and she told me that Lydia said she went and smashed some berries she found in the tree.  I thought this was absolutely adorable!  This time around when I came I made sure that I packed some extra nail polish to paint her nails for real.  I had forgotten about it until the other day she came up to me again with that huge smile on her face and put her foot up on my lap.  Once again she had smashed berries on her little toenails to try to paint them (my toenails have only been painted here so that is probably why she didn’t smash them on her fingers this time).  The next day I then had brought up my real nail polish and was just going to paint Lydia’s toes for her but I figured out real quick that I wouldn’t get away with only painting her toenails.  I would soon be painting everybody’s!  At first Emily and I were only going to paint the girls’ toenails using the purple and pink nail polish I had brought for them but it turns out when we asked the boys if they wanted it done as well they all said yes right away.  Emily and I then spent a good two hours painting 41 little children’s toenails.  Emily had a line going to paint whoever wanted purple with pink sparkles and I had a line going to paint whoever wanted pink with clear sparkles.  The kids were very careful to let them dry before they went off to go and play again.  I could tell that they all really loved it!  While we were painting all of the toenails unfortunately an animal shit on me.  Right away I freaked out and thought that it was a bird but Emily told me to look up and she said it was from the lizard that was on the roof.  So gross!!  Thank goodness Emily came to the rescue and cleaned it off for me.  We also taught the kids to say, “painting our nails” so I got to listen to that for a big chunk of the time.  At the end we took many many pictures of them and it was awesome to see them all so happy that their toenails were now painted like mine.  They really like coming up to me and pointing at my toenails and telling me each of the colors.  I always try to keep my toenails painted colorful for them so that way they will keep on practicing there names of colors.  I also got to paint about ten of the girls's fingernails who just come on the weekend.  It was a lot of fun because they are a bit older then the other children I am used to being with.  I had the boys go off and play there little soccer game while we did it so it was nice to just be able to spend time with the girls.  I was thinking that we might end up painting all of the little children's fingernails once before I leave to just try and use of the nail polish since they loved it so much any ways.  I have a feeling that soon once again I will be covered in nail polish when the task is all complete.  I'm just so happy that I was able to paint Lydia's toenails for real after we showed me how she tried to do it.  She is so adorable!!