Abe Had it Right

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. -Abraham Lincoln

Can I get an "amen?" Today was my first day of the Kayamandi Project and it was such an eye opening experience. These kids have absolutely nothing and are the happiest little bunch I've ever seen. I-love-them.

It's not all fun and games though. The beginning of the day started out a bit rough. Last night my roommate and I decided to start our laundry at 12:30, so we didn't finish until 3:00 in the morning. (Now you know why I never do laundry). Anyways, I had to be dressed and ready to go by 8:00 this morning and that's no easy feat for me even after an entire season of hibernation, much less a night of my least favorite activity ever. But, I survived and made it to the bus with plenty of time. There are 15 girls doing the pre-primary school program and about half of us are here with AIFS so it was nice to see some familiar faces. We arrived at the school, unloaded the bus, and were immediately assigned our classrooms we would be helping in for the semester.

My teacher's name was Vitika and she's amazing. She has to be the most patient woman I've ever met, considering she handles a classroom of over 30 pre-K students on a daily basis. And don't even get me started on the kids. As soon as we walked in they were smiling, waving, and blowing kisses in our direction. Obviously I was eating this up big time. And oh my goodness they are all so precious. They have to wear uniforms, and nothing gets me like well dressed children. I don't understand how they do it, though. It was well over 90 degrees outside, there is no air conditioning in all of Kayamandi, and they were all prancing around in slacks and sweater vests. Goodness, I loved it.

Recess was the most fun I've had since, well, since pre-K! It was a bit difficult to interact with them at first because of the language barrier (they speak isiXhosa, the language with the clicking) but after a while we all figured out how to communicate without having to speak. I even taught some of them how to play patty cake..in English! At one point there was a line of about 40 kids (I'm actually not overexaggerating for once) waiting to do the flip game. Now, some of you might not have a super cool Uncle Danny who played the flip game with you when you were little, so let me explain. You face each other, hold hands, and the kid runs up your stomach and does a flip. I got the arm workout of a lifetime today. Seriously, I'm struggling to type. At one point a rather...well fed....little boy ran up to me with a toothless grin and said "NEXT! NEXT!" I was actually terrified.

OH! And probably the most worthwhile thing I've done since I've been in Africa happened today. We were all inside the classroom and the kids were playing with legos, baby dolls, and toy cars. One of the boys came up to me with the proudest grin and said "teecha, look!" He was holding a machine gun made out of legos. Really. It was gigantic. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually worked. On one hand, the kid definitely has a future in engineering, but I didn't think he was channeling his "talent" in the right way so I decided to help. I took the gun and said "this isn't nice!" with the saddest looking face I could make. Just as I was about to take it apart to make something else I realized something: I have no idea how to make anything cool out of legos. What the heck was I supposed to make this boy that's cooler than a machine gun? So naturally I started to wing it and ended up with a pretty sweet looking plane. I showed him how to make it fly and before you know it I had 30 lego machine guns thrown at me and all the boys were chanting "Plane! Plane! Plane!" I got super into it and, don't tell anyone, but I started sneaking the cooler looking legos from the girls so I could make even bigger, better jets. The kids loved it, and I feel good about them not playing with guns now!

Don't worry Africa, my work here isn't done.