Extreme Home Makeover

Trying to blend in

It has been a good week- we accomplished a few projects at the orphanage that we have been talking about for a few weeks now and it feels great to be making some headway.

On Monday after work, I went shopping in town for blankets, pillows, sheets, cups, and a thermos. It’s not like at home where you can just run to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and grab everything you need in one swoop.  It was a whole afternoon event filled with haggling, hand gestures due to the language barrier, and running up and down the streets trying to find everything we needed.  They definitely do not have the selection we have at home and everything is all over the place but thanks to those superb negotiating skills I picked up as a media buyer, I was able to buy 6 sets of sheets, 5 blankets, 5 pillows, 24 cups, and a thermos for about $150.  Not toooo bad.

Boy's Bunk Before

Boy's Bunk After

I was so excited to bring everything to the orphanage on Tuesday morning because I knew the kids had no idea it was coming; I felt like I was running my own episode of Extreme Home Makeover. Karina and I tried our best to carry everything on our heads like the locals but the end result was tons of complaining and a whole lot of neck pains on Wednesday. As we were walking through the field trying to balance everything on our heads, a few of the older boys came to the rescue and carried everything the rest of the way for us, not really knowing what was in the bags.  As soon as we got to school, we showed the boys what we had brought and they were SO excited.  You would have thought it was Christmas morning. They were running around, laughing, and jumping on the beds.  I have never seen 10 year old boys so happy about making their beds.  They even asked Pascal if they could go home and live with me! The boy’s bedroom has two sets of bunk beds that sleep 10 boys- ages 3 to 12.  Not even the Tyrrell household had quarters that tight! 

Some happy fellas:)

After making the beds in the boy’s room, we went out back to the girl’s bedroom that has one bed and sleeps 4 girls.  During recess, I brought the 4 girls into the bedroom to show them what we had done.  I wish I could have bottled up the smiles they had on their faces and saved them forever.  Witness, the oldest girl living at the orphanage- 7 yrs old, just stood in the corner and covered her mouth because she didn’t want me to see how happy she was.  The other three rolled around in the bed and kept playing with the pillow and hiding under the blanket.  I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t get a little teared up when I showed both the boys and girls their new bedrooms.  It really is amazing what we take for granted at home.

Giddy Girls :)

The other big project we were working on this week was a photo wall with pictures and names of all of the kids. We are still trying to learn all of the children by name so we thought this would be a good way to learn faster as well as make the kids happy- they LOVE seeing pictures of themselves.  All week we tried to take individual shots of each kid.  This was a very difficult task since they all want to be in every picture we take and do not listen when we tell them to get out of the picture.  It’s a miracle we were able to get a solo shot of each child and keep track of everybody’s name.  Today we hung up all of the pictures on the wall in the main classroom and we had to lock all of the kids outside for about an hour while we prepared everything because their excitement was getting in the way. Once it was all done, they were so happy to look at all of the pictures and recite all of their classmate’s names.  Earlier in the week, I also hung up the days of the week, months, colors, and pictures of the weather so they could start learning some more English vocab words.  The walls are looking a lot more colorful than they were a week ago!

A bunch of crazy, locked out kids

The photo wall!

Yesterday we were really sad to see that no porridge was served to the kids during recess because they didn’t have enough money to buy the ingredients, its just made of water and flour.  The kids seemed to have a little less energy than usual but I did not hear one complaint about not having food.  We had asked our house mama last week if she would cook mandazi for all of kids one day this week.  Mandazi is fried dough, it kind of reminds me of a beignet without the sugar on top.  We have it for breakfast a few days a week but it is a real treat to most Africans.  It worked out that our mama was cooking the mandazi for Friday so we brought them to school today and the kids went crazy.  I handed them out with the porridge and each kid was able to get two even though most of the kids tried to trick me into giving them more than that.  There were about 15 mandazi left over, not enough for all of the kids to have another so I decided we would save them for the kids who live at the orphanage to have for breakfast tomorrow.  I was chased into the office by 25 kids when I went to put them away…I actually had to lock myself in there so they would go away and hopefully forget that I had some leftovers.  It was really sad because they were so desperate for more and I have never seen them beg so much for something…I wish I had an endless supply of mandazi to give them.  Next week I am going to the market with our project managers to buy the orphanage rice, beans, flour, and whatever else they need so they can hopefully feed the kids the proper amount of meals a day.

All hopped up on Mandazi

Thanks to my generous family and friends, I was able to make the above possible.  I really cannot express the happiness I saw on the children’s faces this week and knowing that I helped (and YOU helped!) put those smiles on their faces is the exact reason I am here.  The past month has been an up and down roller coaster of emotions because it is so easy to get discouraged that you are not making a difference. Some days are wonderful and you really feel like you are finally making a breakthrough with one of the kids but then other days you are bogged down by the reality that it is going to take a very long time to see progress in the way that we see progress at home. I think everyone who comes to volunteer in Africa carries with them the optimistic hope that they are going to make huge strides in just a few short weeks. Sure everyone wants to see big changes but as I am coming to find, sometimes its the smallest changes that make the biggest difference.

The little things