By Katie Larson, ’14
I am going to Mobile, Alabama to serve with the Daughters of Charity this spring break, and, I admit, I was very nervous at the first meeting for the trip.
After several bonding sessions with our service group, however, the nerves have given way to laughter and ease as I have gotten to know the four others I am going to be traveling and serving with in Mobile.
We have had a few meetings together, and the excitement becomes more and more tangible with each passing week.
In order to prepare for our trip, the group sat down and watched “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary discussing the education system. If you haven’t seen this documentary I highly recommend it.
Growing up in suburban America where I went to both private and public schools, I thought I was pretty cultured in how school systems worked. I was wrong. After watching this documentary I am more than ready to bypass the next two weeks and begin my journey to learn more about the injustices in the education system and what I can do to make a difference.
As midterms and the service sendoff approach, I find myself more and more distracted with thoughts of this service trip. After being at Creighton and hearing about service trips for almost two years, I am excited to finally be able to be a part of this great program. I am looking forward to opening up to learning more about myself through serving others and cannot wait to see all the lessons waiting for me in Mobile.
We are staying with 3 sisters (Daughters of Charity) and they all have different roles within their community. These are three of the most amazing women I have ever met, their English is amazing, and they all have hilarious senses of humor. Many of the children here are orphans, and often times they live alone or with older or younger siblings. The compound we are staying on remains open for them from 6am to 6pm, and many of them don’t leave between those hours because this is the only home they have. Many of them live in the streets and get their only food at school. The sisters are doing all they can, but they can only do so much. Many of them are born HIV + or have AIDS and only live to be young adults, if that. I think the hardest visual thing to take in has been the victims of polio. I have seen several children with polio trying to get around, using their arms as legs, with sandals as shoes for their hands, and their legs dragging behind them. It brought me to tears hearing a local woman talk about how severe a problem it is. I met a young boy, Johannes (John), who wants to be a lawyer and help people in Bahir Dar.
This is not a rare dream. The children here have very tangible and logical dreams — lawyer, doctor, teacher, officer, etc. We finished up classes on Thursday, 12 July, and that day was definitely the most difficult day of the trip. At morning assembly we were presented with gifts from our students, and althoguh they were simple (a scarf and animal carving), they were beautiful and truly from the heart. At the end of the day, I decided that there was nothing “new” that I could teach them, so I decided to use a little of my improvisational abilities (which I used most of the time anyway) and let them be the teachers for a while. We wrote a bunch of English words on the chalkboard and I let them write them out in Amharic figures and English letters for me, so I could leave learning a bit of their language. They LOVED this activity, and we all benefitted from it. I gave them all hugs/handshakes/awards on their way out (English certificates), and they thanked me with smiles, hugs, kisses on the cheek, and a few notes/drawings.
I spent five weeks with five other incredible volunteers, four amazing Daughters of Charity, one compassionate Vincentian priest, hundreds of wonderfully enthusiastic and loving students, and a beautiful, hospitable city. I taught in a very, VERY small classroom in a brand new school located in Tulema Tulema is a “leprosy village” in Jimma. Prior to the establishment of Tulema, people who had leprosy and their families were living in the Catholic cemetery, as they were designated “the living dead.” Though there are only four or five active cases of leprosy in Tulema, and the disease is completely contained, the children and grandchildren of those who have and had leprosy are still ostracized.
At the end of every class, I would call up each student to the door, give him/her a sticker and a hug and a kiss, and ask her/him a “What is this?” “This is a ________.” I also had a large number of heart stickers, so we learned the word for “heart” and that people drew them to say “I love you” (in Amharic it is Wah – de – shar – lo)
