All of the Small Things

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been so tired lately. I didn’t run today; my alarm went off and immediately I said “nope!”. Project this morning was actually pretty fun! We were on physiotherapy, so we go to people’s houses and help them do rehab. It’s so funny because absolutely nothing goes according to plan here. We all piled into the car and found out it had a flat tire. They ended up filling it up and we went on our merry way – even though it had a hole in it. We got to the first house and it was a little confusing because we had no previous knowledge of the patient’s rehab program; we just had notes to follow from the previous group who had helped. This is how every project seems to be; a little is always lost in translation – like maybe it’d be better to have one group work on a project for a longer period of time so that it’s not like starting over every day. The patient was so happy to have us there, which was fun On our way to the next patient, we passed someone who our driver/translator wanted to help because she is a cancer patient who works with African Impact. She was on her way to fill up her water jugs, but we picked up the jugs and filled them so she didn’t have to. This was a really interesting experience to me. I didn’t realize how far people walked to get water. And those jugs are HEAVY!! Also, the location we ended up filling at was just someone’s house who had built and donated a rain collector to the community so people could get water there for free. That was really kind and I feel like made a bigger difference than anything I had done the past two weeks. The rest of physio was great.

In the afternoon, we had planning, where we are assigned projects and design a plan for the week. I was part of the group that designed information sessions to read to the people in the waiting room of clinics. I ended up making a session on dental hygiene. I honestly can’t remember seeing a single village person without missing or damaged teeth. My next project I want to take up is contacting companies like Crest/Colgate to see if they would be willing to donate like 500 toothbrushes for children. I really believe that making a change has to start with the children, especially since in adulthood, the damage to teeth is probably too far gone to be changed.

Well, those were the biggest parts of today. It was a fairly big day for me though, as well, because I decided to wash my clothes in the sink so I didn’t have to go to the laundromat this week :D I’m very proud of that! I walked to the beach as well. I think this week will go fairly fast, and then it’s the safari this weekend!