Monday, June 18, 2007
Kim Sorber
Today can be summed up with the words chaotic peacefulness. The morning was early, as the team prepared to say goodbye to Kate. It was sad to see her go but she had a new chapter to begin in her life with the Navy, whereas the remainder of the team continued here with our service.
After breakfast many people, I believe six all together, ventured off on their home visits with other members of the community. Then, Chelsie and I went to the clinic with the intention of cutting labels to place on the hundreds of pill bottles that our group donated earlier in the trip. Much to our disbelief, within ten minutes of this label-cutting session, the cashier came in and said the doctor needed us. When we arrived at the front of the building there were about fifty mothers carrying screaming babies. A baby clinic — Chelsie and I questioned ourselves wondering why we didn’t know about it. Baby after baby we hung on a hook by their jumper suit, we weighed them, recorded the weight and tried not to have a heart attack when the little ones would swing and tilt out of their suits. Needless to say, this was the crazy part of the day.
After lunch I decided to attend a journalism workshop that Jay, our photographer, was holding in the reading room. The discussion was great and the turnout of students was terrific. Afterwards I took a 1920s typewriter and laptop to the headmaster's office to explain that the reason they were not working was that the typewriter needed batteries and the laptop needed a power cord because the battery was dead. Afterwards went off to find the rest of the group.
Once back at the mission house, a group of the volunteers decided to go out to the waterfall, a place few know of, and one was almost always guaranteed silence. Maybe that’s because you can't play an annoying card game called spit where you slam the table repeatedly and keep everyone up at night or, maybe it's just because we all need some downtime to enjoy ourselves in Africa.
-Kim
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