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…
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