Campaign Day 1

Thursday, July 22, 2010

For our first day in the village, we were scheduled to give out toys, which were donated by a sister school in Finland. We started the morning with no breakfast--thank God for Cheerios! Then we attended a village meeting called a "kgotla," where the leaders of the village announced our presence and our purpose for the day. The villagers were also gathered, along with government officials for the Chobe District, to pick up litter throughout the village. Earlier last week, we had given the students each their own "Burbank Blue Crew" shirt, which is what the Burbank High School students where to all the sporting events. We all wore the shirts while we did our work today, and it was great to see everyone dressed uniformly and representing our home city.

Our Group in their Blue Crew shirts

Villagers cleaning up litter

As we began the day's work, we started to give out the toys to the children who were there. This created mass chaos, as everyone mobbed us, trying to get a toy. Even the adults were trying to take the toys, but we insisted that we could only give the toys to children. We decided to hold off until we reached each individual household, and then only give the toys to the children we saw there. At first, most of the children were scared of us as we approached (we may have been the first white people they had seen in person), but once they realized we had gifts, they warmed up to us. It was amazing to see the delight on these kids' faces as they received the first toy they had ever owned. Even something as simple as a tennis ball made all the difference in the world for these people.

Kids with their new toys

At one of the houses we visited, we met a very old man who is the deputy chief of the village. We asked him his age, but he didn't know it. His wife had to reach into his pocket to find his identification, and the year of birth was 1924--he is 86 years old. We think he had been sitting in the same chair for the last 5 years. This was a very old man, considering the life expectancy in some of these villages. At this same house, we purchased a live chicken that we intended to use as our lunch. The students and our bus driver had to chase the chicken around the house before finally catching it, and the chicken was definitely not happy. We gave the chicken to some women from the village who said they would "prepare" it for us. Later, we bought a second chicken from a different household, as well as some Bream fish from the village store. The chicken was very tough and hard to pull off the bone, but the fish was very good despite the bones and head that we had to avoid. We also filled our stomachs with more pap, not knowing when our next full meal would be.

Village women prparing to cook our chicken

Almost everybody took a long nap in the afternoon, due to the heat and our full lunch. After waking up, the two of us searched for some long, thin sticks that we could use to roast marshmallows in the evening. We had brought supplies with us to make S'mores for the students.

That night for dinner, we had a simple meal consisting of macaroni noodles with a soup-based sauce, and chakalaka. We sat by the campfire while we ate, and we met a young man from the village who we talked to for awhile. We talked a little about politics because everyone on this continent is a huge Obama fan. We also had to explain to him, and many others throughout the trip, that not every person in America is rich with a big house and a fancy car. Just like in Africa, we also have poverty, and people need to work very hard if they want to be successful and wealthy.

After dinner, we gathered all the students for dessert. We needed to explain what S'mores are, because they have never heard of them. We told them that it is one of the few truly American traditions, and that anytime you have a campfire, you must have S'mores. We showed them how to properly roast a marshmallow, and how to construct a S'more, and then we turned them loose. We only had two sticks, so they had to share, but they managed to keep things moving very quickly. Each student had at least two S'mores; some had as many as five. Even Tommie and the bus driver enjoyed them. After running out of crackers for the S'mores, we went to bed.

Enjoying the S'mores