winter's hardships begin

We had a very cold spell which caught us all by surprise, but the weather is milder again. The mornings are often misty and quite chilly and in the evenings the temperature drops considerably, but the days are mainly warm and sunny, around 20 degrees which is pleasant, especially for October. The cold mornings and evenings remind everyone of the cold weather to come and as we go about our work we hear people talking about the winter and wondering how they are going to manage. At this time of year there is always unspoken fear in people's voices "what if ... ?" Many women like this one pictured here come during the day for a while to do their washing or have showers or just to chat while the children play or do school work. Living in such poor conditions as most of our families live, life is hard all year round, but in the winter washing clothes or dishes becomes a major task.

Our work becomes harder too in the winter. Firstly because it's hard to see children and families and work with them knowing the conditions to which they return each day. At the end of the day it's so difficult seeing the street folks all leave, knowing that they have no proper homes to go to. In addition to that they bring with them more dirty clothes to wash and generally make a lot more mess in the day centre ... more cleaning for us when everyone leaves at 1900.