Bad Day :(

Today wasn’t a great day.

Something that I haven’t loved about CCS is that they aren’t always incredibly organized when it comes to placements.  Watoto Rau, my nursery school, is on break for a week.  Living told Julia and I that we would go to an orphanage during this week. 

Today I was not brought to an orphanage.  Julia and I were taken to a juvenile detention center.  We walked through a gate into a large yard that was surrounded by a barbed wire fence.  My eyes were immediately drawn to these horrifying painted murals on the wall of the solitary building that stood in the center of the yard.  The paintings depicted police handcuffing youth and a shirtless kid being beaten with a switch.  Then, quite randomly, the last mural was of boys and girls playing basketball.  Swahili was written above the paintings, but I can only imagine the translation.

The facility was pretty much a holding center for youth who were in trouble with the law who are waiting to be seen in court.  There was one 10 year old girl and 16 boys ages 10 to 17.  After being shown the depressing dormitory style rooms we were led into a room where the kids were already waiting in small wooden desks facing a chalkboard.   They were instructed to greet us “Good Morning Teacher”.  “Wait, did they just say teacher?” I asked to Deo (the placement director for CCS).  “Yes, this is your class.”  I was honestly really pissed.  Why didn’t he tell us that we would be teaching? Deo left and the rest of the day was full of awkward pauses and miscommunications. Grr.  

Since we had ages 10 to 17 we started out with a free writing session.  Basically we just gave them 10 minutes to write whatever they knew in English.  As it turns out if you were to place them on a spectrum one end would be illiterate and the other would be From 3 English; thus, we started with the good ol’ alphabet.  It was miserable.

After writing letters on the board and a few exercises using numbers 1 through 10 we took a break.  This gave us a chance to ask the juvie center’s director, Wolfgang, a few questions.  We wanted to know what kind of criminal activity qualified a minor for placement in the center.  He replied casually that most are here due to theft, but there are a few rapers (a.k.a rapists).  Grrrreeeeeeaaaaaaat.  One of the weirdest parts about this whole place is that it wasn’t a locked down facility.  Although there was barbed wire around the fence the gate was left open and there weren’t any guards.  I mean, honestly, the kids weren’t aggressive, and I didn’t feel unsafe or anything, but the whole experience was frustrating, unsatisfying, and unproductive.  Although Ebra (our driver) wasn’t coming to pick us up until noon, Julia and I walked back to the home base around 10:45. 

As soon as I got back I went and talked to Moses (program director) about being at a different placement and he was completely fine with it.  He also assured me that I would get the opportunity to go to hospitals and health facilities and observe and assist the staff there soon.  I’m clutching to that grain of hope right now because this feeling of helplessness in a place of so much disparity is weighing on me. Ugh.

Sorry for the downer blog post friends. Ups and downs are the bread and butter of an Africa volunteer.

And yes, I’m looking for sympathy and haikus so have at it!

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