Kondandani Potty-time Massacre

The first time we visited Kondanani was the afternoon following our successful adoption hearing in Blantyre. We dropped Vasco off at our host’s house to play Wii and XBox with the boys to his heart’s content, picked up a golden retriever puppy that the family was giving to orphanage and all piled into the SUV – with Rob and Francisco and their equipment – so that we could make it to the children’s village before the crew ran out of enough light to film.

We go there at tea time (5 p.m. every day Annie hosts a tea/coffee and sweets roundtable with her staff), visited for a bit, had some truly awesome Mzuzu coffee and then went to one of the children’s wards, beginning with the infants. Then on to the two-year olds and that’s where all hell broke loose.

It was potty time. More than a dozen toddlers were in an small room adjacent to their sleeping room with the amais. Each was seated on a tiny, brightly-colored plastic potty. As soon as they saw Rob and Francisco, one instigator seated under the sink, began to scream with terror. And then another started. And then another and another and another. Until almost all of them were crying and screaming and trying to pee.

My favorite were two brave little soldiers, one crying and one not, who kept scooting closer and closer to big scary Francisco as he filmed.

It was such a ridiculous sight it made us all laugh. All of us except for, of course, the two longsuffering amais who were left with weeping pee-ers on their hands.

I whipped out my iPhone toward the end just to capture a bit of the moment for posterity.