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Time to say goodbye - Joytown (Final)Day 14

Headed to Joytown like normal (for the last time) to be part of devos. Fridays have become my favorite devo day because its praise day! We stood in a group singing hymns, worship songs, and African chorus. After devos, we passed out daily inspiration desk-top calendars to all the therapists as a thank you and encouragement. The booklets worked out perfectly as they turned into sort of yearbooks with everybody walking around shaking hands and getting the team's email and facebook info.
 
The rest of the morning we continued working on data spreadsheets in our "chapel" work area with a few extra curious faces peering into windows and coming to visit us at our computers.

Favorite high-lights of the day:
  • Continuing to hone my wheelie skills
  • Watching a news camera crew and their filming of the dance group performing a song and dance in costume
  • Wonderful time at lunch laughing and spending time with people
  • Teaching Elizabeth, woman who's been cooking lunch for us, how to make no-bake cookies. They were a hit all around, especially according to John who ate 7 of them…
  • Impromptu "Can you do this" yoga session with some of the therapists
  • Racing and having wheelie battles with some of the kids (racing backwards in a wheelchair is really hard!)
  • Sitting side by side in wheelchairs and talking with 8-year-old Ezra. I listened intently as he described "his best dinosaur" and explained the entire plot of "Ghost Rider" and the "Avatar" cartoons. By the end of the conversation I was surrounded by 4 other little kids, one of which kept gently tugging at my ponytail then running off to grab a friend encouraging him in a spurt of wonder-filled Swahili to do the same.
  • Being part of the mass wheelchair migration up the slope of Joytown to the dining hall. The entire school is built on a kind of hill-slope, perfect set-up for a school with over 100 wheelchair users, no?
  • Hugs and gift exchanges and goodbyes to Joytown though they were crazy bittersweet. I never imagined making such strong connections to people here, as strange as that sounds. My mind was in such a research-only mode in preparing for this trip, I was caught off guard by the number of people that kept telling us "We will miss you guys greatly!" .

We emailed in our final spreadsheets tonight. It's such a crazy feeling looking at the tabs and tabs and tabs of information and knowing that you helped collect it all. The extra cool part is the memories that are attached to nearly every piece of data. I remember looking at data sheets from previous Wheel team's Joytown Kenya runs and seeing nothing but a mound of data and African-looking names. Looking at our data sheets from this year, every name has a face and a smile and a laugh attached to it. This research is something I helped create. It could be the start of major change in Kenya and in the world of wheelchair provision. Or our time here in Kenya could be the start of the change of just one kid's life. And that would be enough. I know its changed me.
Ezra & friends

Silliness on the way to dinner

Dance team preps for the TV crew

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 15, 2013 at 8:27 PM

    wow, Emily, I've just looked through like all your posts from the very beginning, lol...I wish I'd been reading this in Kenya, but it's a beautiful recap on the trip! You're a good writer! I like how you have links throughout your posts to other things.

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