First Full Day of Volunteering

(This was written last Friday. Also, I apologize for the misspelled words. This one is much better.)

So I had my first full day of volunteering yesterday. And I have to say it was an enlightening experience. In the morning I went to my school, which is called Mwandi Community School. The kids in the class were so sweet and eager to learn. It was hard not to feel sorry for them. There clothes looked like they hadn't been washed in months, and more than half didn't even have shoes. All the kids in my class are orphans who have lost their parents to AIDS. They are living with relatives in the community. This community is unlike any community I have ever seen. It's more like a compound. It basically is a 500 yard radius filled with tiny shacks made out of mud, sticks and fabric. My teacher took me on a tour of this place, and it was like a slap in the face. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was dirty and there was trash strewn around everywhere. There were chicken roaming around, and starving dogs looking for food. I went around to talk to the locals, and the most surprising part of all of this, is that the people are happy. They are so welcoming, and are really cheerful and nice. At one point, my teacher took me to "the bar" of the community. It is basically a large mud hut. The people inside were drinking there local beer, which looks like mud water. They kept wanting me to try some, but it was just too much for me. Another funny thing, is that you don't realize that some of these kids have never seen a white person before. I was talking to this mom who had a one year-old and a two year-old. When these babies saw me, they ran screaming like I was the boogie monster. It made me a little sad, but if I had never seen a white person before, I would be scared too. In Zambia when the kids see a white person, they call them a Mazungu. Another volunteer and I have started a game kind of like punch buggy. When a Zambian calls you a Mazungu, the other person gets to punch you in the arm. I will probably bruise from that.

In the afternoon I had sports coaching I was a little bit more at ease about it now that I had already gone. I ended up teaching the girls cheers back from from my Blue Vally Tiger days. But instead of coaching we ended up watching a soccer game between our kids and kids from another school. It was actually really exciting. People were cheering, and doing flips every time our kids scored. I took lots of pictures, but to the kids disappointment they couldn't see what the picture looked like in the screen. They are so used to a white person with a digital camera, that they were pissed when they saw mine was disposable. During the game, I had my first experience with a public African toilet. When I told the kids I had to pee, they just laughed. I finally found one and I made Steve and Matthew (two other volunteers) come with me. Some nice girls that lived in the church let me use theirs. It was very disgusting, but I am very proud of myself for getting through it. Afterwards, I had a nice chat with the girls and I let them have my hand sanitizer. They had never heard of it before, and couldn't believe that something cleaned your hands without soap and water. We started to walk to the bus when I saw three kids begging for a box of cookies from a stand on the side of the road. I bought them each something, and you would have thought I had just given them a thousand dollars.

I feel very strange here. It's great being able to help people and do these amazing activities, but at the same time it hard to feel good when you are working with kids who don't even have shoes. And then twenty minutes later you are booking 100 dollar safaris.