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.
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| Ezra & friends |
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| Silliness on the way to dinner |
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| Dance team preps for the TV crew |
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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