Day 1
For my final week of camp, I am working with Leigh (volunteer) and Chris, the craziest and loudest field staff World Camp has. So from the beginning, I figured it would be a pretty fun week. This camp is the closest of all the camps – it only takes 45 minutes to get there. It also seems to be the calmest, because pulling up on the first day we had the smallest number all session of children rushing the bus and chanting azungu (white people). Because there are people leaving on Friday and they need a day to pack, we made this camp a three day camp, so the schedule was a little altered. Morning songs was the smallest circle we have ever had, so this school is definitely small. My class ended up with 18 kids, though, and we are the dancing hares. The kids in my class are so smart. They already knew most of what we were teaching them about HIV/AIDS, which is encouraging! For instance, one of our lessons is about how you can’t tell if someone has HIV just by looking at them, and pretty much every class of students thinks that you can by certain physical characteristics so it turns into a ten or fifteen minute lesson. But our students immediately responded with the correct answer, that you can only tell if someone has HIV by a blood test, the first time we asked if our imaginary character had HIV. They also already knew the difference between HIV and AIDS, which honestly I didn’t even understand completely before working for World Camp. So I was very happy with my students! We also did condom demonstration today, and it was by far the best one I have done. Chris was hilarious, and kind of obscene, but it was so much fun. I’m kind of sad I won’t ever be doing it again! After lunch consisted just of environment lessons, and I think the kids got a little bored and were being super shy. They weren’t answering questions and it was sort of sad. But we got through it all by the end of the day. I ended the day in really high spirits, and hoped that tomorrow the kids would be a little less shy and have more fun. [Additional side note: The kids in our class all make name tags so that we know their names and can keep up with who has eaten lunch. Today I look up and sitting front and center of my class are two kids. Their names? Happy and Lonely. Sitting side by side. I had to hide my face behind my journal to laugh. Which sounds bad, but honestly it was just hilariously ironic. And apparently Lonely doesn’t actually mean lonely – parents just name their kids words that they hear sometimes…so I don’t feel as bad that I got the giggles.]
Day 2
We were down two volunteers from sickness this day. In fact, at least half of all the volunteers were sick either with stomach issues or sinus, so we had a little trouble getting excited. Luckily, Ian (coordinator) was there to lead morning songs, and he was by far the craziest and most enthusiastic and most hilarious song leader of all the session. So he got us all laughing and pumped for the day. We did Boom-Chika-Boom mummy style, which was quite interesting – not sure the kids really got it. Human knot was just as complicated as ever, but I had a lot of fun getting to participate in the partner trust stand up with the kids. We ran a little behind all day today, but I don’t think it really mattered in the end. During HIV/AIDS review the kids got all of the answers right, so they were obviously more on top of their game than I was since I accidentally asked them if they could get mosquito bites from kissing – hahaha. This was another school where when we started talking about caring for someone with HIV, they told me that no one in their community really helps people with HIV. Which is hard and disheartening, but at least we can educate the kids about how they can reach out to someone with HIV, and maybe they will be willing to do so after going through the camp. After lunch, I tried to make a better connection with the kids, and I think it was successful. During morning songs I always tend to lead or at least be involved with Pasi, which is kind of like the Chichewa version of head, shoulders, knees, and toes. So for some reason the past couple of camps I have been known as Chiuno girl (which is the word for hips in Chichewa). So the kids of my class started singing that to me – which was probably just their way of making fun of me – but I went with it anyway and did the song, after which they started teaching me all the other parts of the body in Chichewa. This tends to be the only way I end up bonding with students, but hey that’s okay. Sing, dance, and teach each other parts of the body in a different language – who knew that would be the recipe for success? After lunch we had empowerment sessions, and this was actually the most talkative group of girls I have had all summer. We didn’t even have to do anonymous questions because they were asking questions out loud on their own. They had a lot of questions about pregnancy, but not too many about other things, especially since only 4 of them admitted to liking boys. Although it was cute because we went around the circle to say what we liked about boys (when we were introducing ourselves), and those girls said that they liked when a boy helped them with their studies. There were some questions about transactional sex, rape, and a consensus that sex is the boy’s decision, but these were all things we worked through and discussed, so I hope the girls really feel better about making decisions that are right for them, regardless of what others think. So yeah, the day went pretty good.
*Cook Group Night* The power hadn’t been going out for a couple weeks, but last night our power went out while people were cooking, and tonight it went out again while my cook group was cooking. The power was out for almost two hours, and just when we resorted to taking all of our food outside to the gas stoves to start cooking, the power came back on. Even though our cooking was delayed, it was pretty bomb-tastic: sweet potato fries, eggs, green peppers, onions, cheese, and toast, and no bake cookies for dessert. Definite success.
Day 3
Last day of camp – soooo crazy. I was determined to have an awesome day. It was definitely the most excited I have been for morning songs. It was my last time to do pasi so I was pretty pumped for it and had a lot of fun – I mean it is my favorite after all (why? BECAUSE IT’S IN CHICHEEEEWAAAAA!!!!) Games consisted of ultimate Frisbee. The kids absolutely love it. I hate it. Mainly because I’m way too competitive so even though they are just kids and have never played before, I get really upset when everyone on the field is cheating and it is just mass chaos. And I got a nail ripped off. So although I tried to play I ended up just watching from the sidelines for the last couple minutes which was fine by me. We had a little free time at the beginning of class as we were waiting for some people to grab things, so we let the kids ask us questions. They asked where we were from and then if we had boyfriends. When we said no, they asked us what we did when we wanted to have sex – yeeeeeeaaaahhhh that created awesome awkward conversations. Later when we did anonymous questions we got some pretty great ones. There were the usual tame ones, like are there black people in America, why don’t you speak Chichewa, and other common sex questions. But we got some pretty hilarious ones, too. For instance, why do you white girls sometimes sit with your legs wide open? Oopsie! Had to apologize and explain to them that we don’t usually wear skirts (which also came up in another question – why don’t you respect your bodies with the way you dress in America?). Also got asked if we planned on getting married since we didn’t have boyfriends. I said I would love to have a boyfriend and get married, I just hadn’t found the right guy yet. To this, they asked me if I would accept a proposal from a black man. When I said yes, four boys raised their hands, one even got to his feet, offering themselves to me. I am one lucky girl. If only I were staying in Malawi – I’d have a great crowd of fifteen year olds to choose from. We had some other questions that were pretty funny, but maybe a little too intense to put on the blog, so again feel free to just ask. [Funny question from another class: If I come to America will I get eaten?] After questions we planted our tree, took pictures, and gave our class their AIDS ribbons which is always kind of a special thing. After lunch we had presentations, and my group’s was probably my favorite of all my classes this summer. One of the boys, Milan, was dressed up as a witch doctor and he looked so cute! Although they kind of improved and the presentation was a bit lengthy, they got across their message about the three ways HIV can be transmitted quite well. I was proud! I ended up having a blast with my class this last day – they really came out of their shells and were a hoot to be around and talk to and hear from. It made me wish that the camp had been four days because I would have loved more time with them. I’m going to miss them, and although I think I still liked my camp 3 class the best, this was definitely a very close second. It was hard to leave at the end of the camp because I knew that it was my last time to be with kids in Malawi. :( Hopefully I’ll be able to visit Crisis Nursery before going home at least.
After camp today we had a field staff appreciation party. We made all of them cards the previous night and had signed all of them. I made Chikabachi’s and it was probably the craftiest thing I have ever done so I was quite proud. We just hung out with all of them on the front porch, drank Fantas, and ate no bake cookies (we were supposed to have cake but the power was out ALL day – it seriously just came back on at 5:00 – darn you deforestation). Good to see all of them one last time I suppose. Kind of sad though!
There are lots of things that I could probably say right now reflection wise, but I don’t really feel like typing it out. So since I am going to have a lot of time over the next couple of days before I leave Sunday, I’ll just put it off til later. So if you were looking for something deep and spiritual from me today, sorry! Give me a bit more time. :)
Much love to you people back home!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Refugee Camp and Lake Malawi
So I would say that our last day of camp 4 without a hitch, but when we loaded the bus to go Thursday morning, we had to wait for a new tire because one of ours was flat. Seemed like someone didn’t want us to get to this school! But we ended up only being about an hour late. We already were cramming two days into one from where we missed Wednesday, but the day actually went fairly smoothly anyway considering. The kids weren’t really much more talkative than they had been the previous days, but the last day was still fun and felt good. I am hoping the kids have a little bit better understanding of HIV/AIDS now and how it is transmitted and can be prevented. We planted a tree together, too, and one of our kids broke the hoe, but oh well it happens. Our presentation was over misconceptions about HIV, and we told our kids to come up with an original song. After they had practiced it we were in the middle of the next lesson when I hear the exact same song coming from another classroom. So we made them switch it, but I think the final product was a success. Daniel was TL for this camp, which made him MC for presentations. He tried to make jokes, like for the team called Big Mountains, he said “Mount Nikhoma (which was in the background) ain’t got nothing on you.” Or for the Burning Flames, “That performance was on fire!” There were a couple others about singing goats and potential for the future being brighter than the pinwheels, which made no sense to me. I don’t think jokes really translate, though, because no one laughed. Which actually made it quite funny for us. That was Y2Y’s last camp, so they celebrated when they got back as we prepared for the weekend.
Dzaleka Refugee Camp
Friday we got up and headed to Malawi’s refugee camp for an outreach project. There used to be two camps in Malawi, but they were combined, so that now this camp has around 10,000 people. Malawi provides the land for the camp while the United Nations provides food and some shelter. Ten different nations are represented at the camp, and there is one primary school with 4,000 students and a secondary school that has 350. Our intentions for outreach was to review HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention, do the condom demonstration, and discuss misconceptions/stigmas with them, so that they could educate others (we were working with adults). When we got there I could just look out and see an endless number of shack houses all very close together. We got off the bus and went into a very very small church. We sat outside in the back, and they welcomed us and some of them put on a skit about HIV/AIDS and stigma. It was funny and really great, so that was pretty cool. Afterwards we split into our groups. It ended up being quite a struggle and a bit frustrating, because we didn’t use our usual field staff/translators because the people at the refugee camp don’t speak Chichewa (since they aren’t from Malawi), but rather French and Swahili. So we had to use their translators, and they weren’t familiar with many of the words found in our curriculum, so it made talking really difficult because when they didn’t understand it was hard to think of different words and phrases. Eventually the translating got a little better. When we did the condom demonstration, one of the women had to run off and throw up because she had never seen a condom before. This was a grown woman, and to be in a place where HIV/AIDS is such an issue and yet to have never seen a condom was just unreal and sad to me. The group got to asking questions which was good, because we were able to clear up some misconceptions about condoms and some ways that HIV is spread. It also helped because the last hour of teaching our Y2Y program joined us, and one of the girls Patricia speaks French (and is from Canada) and was able to translate for us. Since she knows our curriculum things went a lot smoother for that last bit. It was encouraging to hear them talk about wanting to know how they can improve their skit for educational purposes and asking about how to teach certain things. There were people in the group who really wanted to make a difference. The last five minutes were the absolute hardest, though. We were asked a bit about taking care of someone with HIV, and it was mentioned how nutrition is important for someone with HIV. Then they were asking why we couldn’t bring stuff to them to help them and wanting to know how we could help. They just kept saying that the medicines they needed (ARVs) weren’t available to them and they didn’t have good food to eat so what should they do. The silence that had to follow was miserable. We tried saying to eat the food that was available and do their best, but they responded with that it wasn’t good food and the translator said if you looked at it you would never want to eat it and that it had little or no nutritional value to it. “So what can you do for us? What should we do?” We didn’t have an answer and just looked at each other. That was such a heartbreaking moment. They have no control over what food they eat, Malawi is hosting them but it isn’t their home, and they also can’t get jobs in Malawi because they are refugees. It isn’t fair, and nothing I could have said in that moment would have made anything better.
During lunch break, I went outside the church and found a couple of little kids sitting in the dirt. At first when I went and tried to sit down beside one of them, he got up and walked away. Haha. But five minutes later I tried again with the same kid but his sister was with him then, too, and they let me sit. Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by ten kids, just sitting in the dirt with me. Two girls in particular were really friendly with me and were particularly fascinated with my hair. They would hold my hand and rub my hair, and we were kind of talking to each other although neither one of us really knew what the other was saying. One of the girls was so gorgeous, but both of them were afraid of cameras so I didn’t get a picture. It was fun to just sit there surrounded by the kids, with one in my lap, and just smile with them and play in the dirt. I was sad when they told us it was time to go back in.
After lunch the coordinators had arranged for us to be able to listen to some of the stories of how people had come to be at the refugee camp. They had asked before we came for us to be able to ask questions to people who were comfortable talking about their stories. Apparently there had been some miscommunication, though, because when we all crammed into this little dark room, they first just thanked us, and then asked if anyone had any questions. People asked a bit about numbers and such for the camp, but when one of our volunteers asked about stories, they weren’t willing to talk about it, which I completely understand. His response was kind of haunting to me: “To you it is a story, but to me it is reality.” These people witnessed many horrific things that we would never want to even imagine and could never comprehend or understand. He talked about how painful it was to even think about his past and that they were his ghosts and wanted to leave them behind. I have a hard enough time watching violence in movies; I can’t imagine how tormenting it would be to see such things in real life. Before we left the main guy asked us if we were all Christians, and when the response was no, he asked if we knew Jesus, because He was coming back soon. We got a group picture and loaded back onto the bus.
Driving away I think everything hit me pretty hard. The scene set before my eyes looked like straight out of District 9 (the movie with the aliens that live in slums – random comparison but pretty much just that it was poor and not great living conditions). My heart was unbelievably heavy as I kept replaying in my mind them asking what they should do when they don’t have the food they need to eat or medicines to take and him saying that his past was not a story but his reality and just how much pain was obviously there and these kids growing up in a place like that. I mean everyone we have worked with so far has been poor (in a material way), but at least the other kids we work with are at home and in a strong community. These kids, and people really, are misplaced and have pain in their past and scars on their hearts and no real source of income and little shelter. Life was really hard to accept and understand in that moment. I kind of broke down and let myself cry because I didn’t really know what else to do. I’ve seen things like that in movies but it has never been real. It is just so hard to think of the differences between my life and theirs. And to think of them and the people like them in this world living like that every day. I just can’t really understand. The light to it all is that many of them at least had faith in God, and with that something to hope for.
Lake Malawi
After the refugee camp we headed straight to the lake. It was pretty windy and cold when we got there, but nice to relax. We stayed at a place called “Cool Runnings,” and it definitely had smiley faces and Jamaican colors everywhere. We set up our tents, which immediately had ants all in them which was unfortunate, had dinner, and then I went to bed to get up early the next day. The next day consisted of just reading in a lounge chair all morning (it was still pretty cold and windy), but after lunch it warmed up a bit and some of us decided to rent a boat out to “Lizard Island.” From there we jumped off of rocks into the lake. It was decently high up so it was pretty scary for me because I had never done anything like it. Although the scariest part was just being in the water with the waves and trying to climb back up to the rock. Luckily everyone survived it and we had a really fun time. Consequences? Well we all might have a parasite now, but I will worry about that when I get back to the Unites States. We had been told that the parasite didn’t live in that part of the lake because it was too wavy, but I’m sure I’ll just take the medicine anyway. After that we went into the village for a bit and watched part of a local soccer game. For dinner we had some fish from the lake. On the way home on Sunday we went by the craft market, which was not at all in my comfort zone. Everyone wanted you to come in their shack and by their stuff and would hassle you, and it just made me anxious. But besides that, the weekend was fun and relaxing. And there was a lot of time for thinking, which was good and needed after the week.
Crazy to think that I only have a week left. This morning starts our last camp. I’m sure this week is going to be pretty bittersweet…
Dzaleka Refugee Camp
Friday we got up and headed to Malawi’s refugee camp for an outreach project. There used to be two camps in Malawi, but they were combined, so that now this camp has around 10,000 people. Malawi provides the land for the camp while the United Nations provides food and some shelter. Ten different nations are represented at the camp, and there is one primary school with 4,000 students and a secondary school that has 350. Our intentions for outreach was to review HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention, do the condom demonstration, and discuss misconceptions/stigmas with them, so that they could educate others (we were working with adults). When we got there I could just look out and see an endless number of shack houses all very close together. We got off the bus and went into a very very small church. We sat outside in the back, and they welcomed us and some of them put on a skit about HIV/AIDS and stigma. It was funny and really great, so that was pretty cool. Afterwards we split into our groups. It ended up being quite a struggle and a bit frustrating, because we didn’t use our usual field staff/translators because the people at the refugee camp don’t speak Chichewa (since they aren’t from Malawi), but rather French and Swahili. So we had to use their translators, and they weren’t familiar with many of the words found in our curriculum, so it made talking really difficult because when they didn’t understand it was hard to think of different words and phrases. Eventually the translating got a little better. When we did the condom demonstration, one of the women had to run off and throw up because she had never seen a condom before. This was a grown woman, and to be in a place where HIV/AIDS is such an issue and yet to have never seen a condom was just unreal and sad to me. The group got to asking questions which was good, because we were able to clear up some misconceptions about condoms and some ways that HIV is spread. It also helped because the last hour of teaching our Y2Y program joined us, and one of the girls Patricia speaks French (and is from Canada) and was able to translate for us. Since she knows our curriculum things went a lot smoother for that last bit. It was encouraging to hear them talk about wanting to know how they can improve their skit for educational purposes and asking about how to teach certain things. There were people in the group who really wanted to make a difference. The last five minutes were the absolute hardest, though. We were asked a bit about taking care of someone with HIV, and it was mentioned how nutrition is important for someone with HIV. Then they were asking why we couldn’t bring stuff to them to help them and wanting to know how we could help. They just kept saying that the medicines they needed (ARVs) weren’t available to them and they didn’t have good food to eat so what should they do. The silence that had to follow was miserable. We tried saying to eat the food that was available and do their best, but they responded with that it wasn’t good food and the translator said if you looked at it you would never want to eat it and that it had little or no nutritional value to it. “So what can you do for us? What should we do?” We didn’t have an answer and just looked at each other. That was such a heartbreaking moment. They have no control over what food they eat, Malawi is hosting them but it isn’t their home, and they also can’t get jobs in Malawi because they are refugees. It isn’t fair, and nothing I could have said in that moment would have made anything better.
During lunch break, I went outside the church and found a couple of little kids sitting in the dirt. At first when I went and tried to sit down beside one of them, he got up and walked away. Haha. But five minutes later I tried again with the same kid but his sister was with him then, too, and they let me sit. Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by ten kids, just sitting in the dirt with me. Two girls in particular were really friendly with me and were particularly fascinated with my hair. They would hold my hand and rub my hair, and we were kind of talking to each other although neither one of us really knew what the other was saying. One of the girls was so gorgeous, but both of them were afraid of cameras so I didn’t get a picture. It was fun to just sit there surrounded by the kids, with one in my lap, and just smile with them and play in the dirt. I was sad when they told us it was time to go back in.
After lunch the coordinators had arranged for us to be able to listen to some of the stories of how people had come to be at the refugee camp. They had asked before we came for us to be able to ask questions to people who were comfortable talking about their stories. Apparently there had been some miscommunication, though, because when we all crammed into this little dark room, they first just thanked us, and then asked if anyone had any questions. People asked a bit about numbers and such for the camp, but when one of our volunteers asked about stories, they weren’t willing to talk about it, which I completely understand. His response was kind of haunting to me: “To you it is a story, but to me it is reality.” These people witnessed many horrific things that we would never want to even imagine and could never comprehend or understand. He talked about how painful it was to even think about his past and that they were his ghosts and wanted to leave them behind. I have a hard enough time watching violence in movies; I can’t imagine how tormenting it would be to see such things in real life. Before we left the main guy asked us if we were all Christians, and when the response was no, he asked if we knew Jesus, because He was coming back soon. We got a group picture and loaded back onto the bus.
Driving away I think everything hit me pretty hard. The scene set before my eyes looked like straight out of District 9 (the movie with the aliens that live in slums – random comparison but pretty much just that it was poor and not great living conditions). My heart was unbelievably heavy as I kept replaying in my mind them asking what they should do when they don’t have the food they need to eat or medicines to take and him saying that his past was not a story but his reality and just how much pain was obviously there and these kids growing up in a place like that. I mean everyone we have worked with so far has been poor (in a material way), but at least the other kids we work with are at home and in a strong community. These kids, and people really, are misplaced and have pain in their past and scars on their hearts and no real source of income and little shelter. Life was really hard to accept and understand in that moment. I kind of broke down and let myself cry because I didn’t really know what else to do. I’ve seen things like that in movies but it has never been real. It is just so hard to think of the differences between my life and theirs. And to think of them and the people like them in this world living like that every day. I just can’t really understand. The light to it all is that many of them at least had faith in God, and with that something to hope for.
Lake Malawi
After the refugee camp we headed straight to the lake. It was pretty windy and cold when we got there, but nice to relax. We stayed at a place called “Cool Runnings,” and it definitely had smiley faces and Jamaican colors everywhere. We set up our tents, which immediately had ants all in them which was unfortunate, had dinner, and then I went to bed to get up early the next day. The next day consisted of just reading in a lounge chair all morning (it was still pretty cold and windy), but after lunch it warmed up a bit and some of us decided to rent a boat out to “Lizard Island.” From there we jumped off of rocks into the lake. It was decently high up so it was pretty scary for me because I had never done anything like it. Although the scariest part was just being in the water with the waves and trying to climb back up to the rock. Luckily everyone survived it and we had a really fun time. Consequences? Well we all might have a parasite now, but I will worry about that when I get back to the Unites States. We had been told that the parasite didn’t live in that part of the lake because it was too wavy, but I’m sure I’ll just take the medicine anyway. After that we went into the village for a bit and watched part of a local soccer game. For dinner we had some fish from the lake. On the way home on Sunday we went by the craft market, which was not at all in my comfort zone. Everyone wanted you to come in their shack and by their stuff and would hassle you, and it just made me anxious. But besides that, the weekend was fun and relaxing. And there was a lot of time for thinking, which was good and needed after the week.
Crazy to think that I only have a week left. This morning starts our last camp. I’m sure this week is going to be pretty bittersweet…
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