Yesterday was interesting. It started with the morning training session -- the women we were supposed to train never showed up. The men wanted us to purchase them an office and a minibus to "empower" them to do ministry. Needless to say, we weren't quite buying into this plan. Have you ever heard of a "sitting allowance"? Well, I hadn't until yesterday, but apparently in order to do Stop The Spread work we were told that it is necessary to provide the people who you are helping with free food, transport money and a SITTING ALLOWANCE (i.e., you pay each person attending the meeting to sit on their butts during the meeting). Not exactly the heart we were looking for... the focus was on getting the title associate with chairing an STS. Time for new leadership on the Zambian side.
We arrived at Chibote high school after our morning "training session". Our PA system didn't work (again). Then after Dr T left we were notified that the water was out in the school and they had released all the kids early. So our afternoon session was completely scrapped. We twiddled with the PA system to try to get it working and waited at the school for ~3.5 hours to for Dr T to finish his things and make it back to Kitwe to pick us up (he's doing the work that should probably be allotted to 3-4 qualified people)... we didn't want to take public transport because we had to take the PA system home with us to get it fixed. So from there we went to a meeting about the Murundu Orphanage Foundation (MOF), so of course it was only appropriate that the person we had scheduled to meet was in Kitwe.
So the day seemed to basically be a blowout, but I wasn't bothered by it... maybe since it was out of our control. And we gained a few things from the day: (1) A decision was made to put new leadership in place with the STS Zambia team in Kitwe (2) While we were waiting for Dr T to come some of the Chibote girls stayed to hang out with us... we had fun getting to know them, playing games, singing songs, and getting Medryn to teach us a dance she made up. Good stuff. (3) we left the MOF meeting with a green light as far as taking over the orphanage (4) The van didn't break down on the way home from Kitwe and we survived another day of Dr T's crazy driving. :)
About the Murundu Orphanage Foundation, we were shown a lot of paperwork regarding the history of the orphanage and some of the squabbles that we had been hearing about that cleared things up for us. Also, they are prepared to give us complete control over the orphanage and all of the property, buildings, etc for us to improve the situation for the orphans in that area. There are more than 300 orphans in the city and I have heard that the HIV infection rate is around 75%, although I don't know where that statistic comes from.
Jeremy spoke today (Thursday) on our condition after trauma and gave several stories to illustrate his point... I know that a lot of girls were touched by what he was saying, but one girl stood out to me and my eyes kept sticking on her during the message. So as I divided up the small groups I hoped and prayed that she was in mine and she got my number so I was stoked. There were about 12 or so girls in my small group and this girl sat directly to my right. Since this was our first small group (we were planning to have them every day, but various things prevented them from happening) and we were running short on time I just asked everyone to introduce themselves... their name, grade, and something about themselves. Well, that girl on my right started us off and just busted out with her story... parents dead of HIV, current living situation, etc, and then just started crying... I'm used to facing a brick wall on the first day and getting some of the kids to say ANYTHING can be like pulling teeth, then gradually moving towards a place where some of the girls can confide in my by the end of our 2 week sessions. So I couldn't believe that she was willing to trust me and the rest group with her story. With my arm around her, the rest of the girls in the circle began to introduce themselves by saying their names, grade, and then how old they were when their parents died and what their current living situation is. Afterwards I got some time to be one-on-one with the girls and I was again surprised by their honesty about the trauma in their own lives and pleased to have the opportunity to cut to the heart of the issues and start counseling them and praying with them.
Tannen
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