Tuesday, March 15 – Day 4
Happy Ides of March?
Today was my first day at the volunteer house in Dodowa and at the WORCSA orphanage at which we volunteer. Life has shifted rather a lot in the past 12 hours since our morning IVHQ orientation. We start our day at just past 5:30 tomorrow morning, so I’ll keep it short.
The kids are challenging and attention-deficit and engaged and fantastic, often all at the same time. Peter, one of the older boys, might have malaria, according to fellow volunteers Michelle (who was a nurse for years back home in England) and Tamar (who started this morning with Niki and I after a month on a medical project through a different program). Tamar, by the way, unconcernedly has typhoid; apparently the shot is only 85% effective. Lucky, who has special needs, clung to my back for much of an hour this afternoon. Kujo, who’s maybe 3 [note: he’s 5], fell asleep in my arms briefly before an orange-drink snack was brought out. I helped Eto and Elizabeth and two others with math homework, a highlight of the day. Eto was working on basic multiplication (e.g., 5x6), the girls on expressions such as 2a[(3x+y)+4(2a-b)].
Friendships and comfort zones can form and shift quite quickly. Everyone being new together shifted in a ten-minute transitory period to 3 of us rookies being surrounded by 11 veteran volunteers, coming to live in their house and join their project. Three are living this week, which creates an atmosphere of reflective farewells. It’s an odd sensation to be thrown into the challenges and critiques as well as the positive energy about the kids that these seasoned volunteers have developed over 2 or 4 or 8 weeks. I know the house will shift, amoeba-like, to welcome us.
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