Today I woke up with
the Rocky theme song stuck in my head. Well not exactly, but that was the
general feeling among the team as we went over our plans for the day of mass
data collection. We each had our subjects divided up onto lists and were
partnered up with a "people-fetcher" whose job it would be to bring
kids from their classes to the research area. All of the kids who were subjects
for the original wheelchair skills testing would be called back to test the
standard "China chair" on rough ground only, a 6-minute rolling test.
After devos, the
first subjects arrived and off we went into a morning of perpetual circles
around the school dirt road. 10 names stared at me from my list in the morning
and by tea time only 5 remained. After lunch I finished off the last 2 subjects
and loaded the last of my heart-rate data. I looked up from the computer to
realize we had done it! And with relative peace and ease! A day that I expected
to be totally frantic and crazy turned out to be a smoothly flowing collection
of data and reunion with each of my subjects. It was really fun to reconnect
with some of my first couple subjects, kids I had worked with during my third
or so day in Kenya.
The rest of the day
was devoted to entering data into spreadsheets and hanging out with the kids
once they got out of class. There also was a little matter of mischief
centering around the birthday celebration of one of the volunteers, John, who
has been helping with our research. John, who doesn't know how to swim, was
taken for a surprise dip by Matt. Lured over to the pool by the false
information that Matt needed to finish one last subject for the day, John was
suddenly bear hugged by Matt and pulled into the water, but not before
squirming and frantically demanding to save his shoes from a soggy fate. The
comical struggle and splash caused an huge eruption of giggling from the
audience of children, therapists, and Wheels members.
In other news, I
still feel slightly sickly via my nose and throat but definitely on the mend!
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| Wheelie skillz |
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