We went to Fountain of Hope on Friday morning. They were playing a big game of soccer but we didn’t join in because they are so good! Even Sarah was too intimidated to get in on it. We hung out in the office with the students from Bowdoin and helped them design their own version of an HIV/AIDS questionnaire. Eventually, we started to get frustrated because it occasionally feels like there’s nothing useful for us to be doing there. They don’t have classes on Friday, so we can’t even teach. It’s a shame because they really need help in the classrooms. Teachers aren’t paid consistently, so they rarely show up. I hung out in the library with the girl from Bowdoin that we’re friends with and helped some grade 2 boys read. Meanwhile, Sarah assisted Steven with the girl’s netball team outside.
We don’t like eating in front of all of the boys, so we walked to eat lunch at the gas station at the end of the road. While we were there, we talked to the manager about donating the hot food that they serve every day if it doesn’t get sold. He said that on most days, they give the leftovers to their maintenance employee, but on two days of the week he’d be happy to donate to Fountain. He also said that he had a big box of clothing that he’d like the boys to have if they would walk down the street to pick it up. That stroke of luck inspired us to spend the rest of the afternoon tracking down more donors in the area. We weren’t entirely successful, though. Three fast food chicken places turned us down (one of them did ask for our number to “give to his boss”, but we strongly suspect that he just wanted our number). One grocery store agreed to donate expired food once a month, but that’s useless. The boys are orphans…that doesn’t mean they’re superhumans who can eat expired food.
We went our separate ways feeling a little disheartened. Sarah went to Munali to work with her basketball team and I went back to the office. She ran another very successful practice while I gathered materials to use for my leadership workshop. My High Impact Leadership professor kept almost of the slides and video clips on Duke’s Blackboard site. I downloaded almost all of them to pick apart for my own powerpoint. I also noticed that a few of the Chipata and Tionge students were using their anonymous questions to ask where they should go to get tested for HIV, treatment for HIV, or to seek counseling post-sexual abuse. I asked my favorite woman at the office, Victoria, if she wouldn’t mind compiling a list of the HIV and sexual abuse clinics in the area. She said yes! We’re going to pick it up from the office on Tuesday morning next week.
We had burgers and mashed sweet potatoes for dinner. Great story about the sweet potatoes…I walked down the street to pick some up and upon inquiring about the price, the Zambian man I asked said they were, “5 pin a hip”. I was thinking, “Okay…I don’t know what hip really means…but 5 thousand kwacha for one sweet potato is a sweet deal!” I picked my two favorites and offered the man a 5 thousand kwacha note. He was like, “No, no! Sweet muzungu girl you don’t understand! It’s 5 thousand kwacha for this whole pile!” I was like oh my gosh…this man wants only $1 for about 15 sweet potatoes. I tried to tell him that I would pay him 5 thousand and take only 2 because that’s all I wanted but he just wouldn’t listen. I was literally like, “Sir, I will pay you the correct price and you can keep all of these for your family!” He insisted, so I ended up walking down the street, laughing the entire way, with an enormous bag of sweet potatoes. We’ll be eating baked, roasted, and mashed sweet potatoes for a while, I think. Good thing they’re really yummy. We watched The Ugly Truth on my computer and then went to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment