Sonjelle insisted that I nap and I felt a little better when
I woke up. The afternoon was
pretty standard- we sent a few of the kids to the market for some things and
did a little tutoring until bedtime- but by the time they were all in bed I
felt brain-dead.
All three of us are brain-dead. Sonjelle suggested a trip to the Internet café then “Maxi
Spot” (spot means bar, chop means restaurant). Mauwli met up with us at the spot, and a girl Sonjelle had
met the night before stopped by. A
nurse from the hospital. It was
hard to tell how old she was.
Barely into her twenties at most.
Her hair was either a really great wig or really expensive
extensions. It was straight and
silky black. She wore tasteful
makeup, and a not-so-tasteful tight dress. She was chatty and seemed personable, so I asked her to come
by the house to talk to the kids about her education and experience. She agreed to come on Sunday afternoon,
and told us we are invited at her house.
A few minutes later a huge, shiny black SUV rolled up to the bar and a
tall middle-aged man with a basketball-shaped belly stepped out wearing a fancy
blue and white print cloth wrapped expertly around his body. The nurse excused herself and made a
bee-line for the guy.
I gawked at the sparkling Ford Expedition. It’s not liked I hadn’t seen one
before. They’re all over the place
at home. Then I realized why it
looked so funny. It was parked on
a shoddily paved road (the one paved road in town) next to a rusty bike and
some men who weren’t wearing any shoes.
Plus it was almost as big as the Maxi Spot itself.
My bar-mates explained to me that this dude is the richest
dude in town (as if I couldn’t have come to that conclusion myself), and rumor
has it our nurse friend is on the prowl for him. She’s spent a few nights with him already, and is hoping to
marry up. Mauwli told me that she
was just being polite earlier, saying she’d come to the home, and inviting us
to her place is a nice customary thing to do even though she didn’t mean it.
He saw my disappointment, so he started telling us what a
great idea it is. He brought up
the point that it’s also a great way to empower the presenter, and build up
their sense of self-worth. We’re
still not sure that this is the most important thing we can be doing for the
home—it’s just what we can do now.
Big Stars in hand, we launched into a brainstorming rant,
barely knowing where to begin.
Edem seems to keep the kitchen stocked, and the kids have their medicine
and a roof over their heads. We
have no idea how long the money will last, or how much money there actually
is. Sonjelle says that Joy, the 22
year old nursing student who helped Edem get this off the ground, is trying to
figure out the fundraising. I
guess they got a $10,000 grant from MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation. I have no concept of how long that will
last here, and of course, not having seen the grant, we don’t know exactly what
that pays for. And then there are
the day to day worries. Joy’s not here. Edem
isn’t here. Not really. Maybe that’s just because he has us volunteers at the moment
so he can take care of other things (what other things, we have no idea) until
we’re gone. It doesn’t feel like
there is consistency for the kids.
How do we make that happen?
At the very least we should make a schedule. There wasn’t really a schedule when we got here. We can make it, but will it continue
after we’re gone? Did someone set
up rules and schedules before we got here, all for nothing also? And that’s just the beginning of their
day to day wellbeing. These kids
need someone to be thinking about their futures, too. They’ll need to be prepared and have the money to go to
college or learn a trade. And they
need to feel loved. All of this needs to happen when we’re
not here. We went around and around from big
picture organizational issues like accounting and record keeping and
international fundraising, to long-term childcare issues like ARV meds and
adulthood, to immediate issues like consistency, education, food, security, and
love. And how do a bunch of vacation
volunteers fit in to this without
emotionally scaring these beautiful children who have already been through
enough?
Although John was just as overwhelmed as the two of us, he
reminded us of “small small.” He suggested
we implement “house meetings” every night and try to set up a few “career day”
presentations. Then we write out a
schedule and “volunteer responsibilities” for future volunteers, which Sonjelle
had already started. Small small.
Just as we started to feel as though things were manageable,
a new yavo who looked and dressed European but sounded American, wandered over to
Maxi Spot and Sonjelle invited him to join us. Sam is teaching for two months and today was his first day
of school. He was given the
textbook (a student copy, since they don’t have teacher copies) as he walked
into the classroom. It turned out he
was the new sex-ed teacher and the text was, as most texts are, distributed by
the government. The book was
absolutely ridiculous. It said that
in order to eschew HIV/AIDS you should “avoid deep kissing” and that every
adolescent must shave their pubic hair.
And, last but not least, don’t share bread. There were even graphics
of not sharing bread. The
outrageous falsities went on and on.
My head started spinning again. What a mess.
What can we do? What is
being done already about this?
Their government issued
this? Who do I email my concerns
to? Does Condoleezza Rice know
about this? What should we do
tomorrow at the home? Sit down and
talk with the kids?
When I came out of my own head, Sam was preaching to a
shell-shocked John and a fuming Sonjelle. He looked all relaxed, oblivious to his audience. He was saying things along the lines of
“This place is retarded.” Sure,
the textbooks are cause for concern, but yapping about how the whole culture is
completely backward is a bit much.
I fantasized about stapling his mouth shut, folding him into a box, and
mailing him back to wherever he came from. John and I couldn’t stomach him anymore, so we left Sonjelle
to spar with him on her own. I’m
pretty sure she was enjoying herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment