This April I had the awesome opportunity to work at an orphanage, La Maison d'Arnaud, in northern Madagascar. As part of a site-exchange*, I and two other Volunteers (one third-year education Volunteer who lives at the orphanage and one health Volunteer from my Peace Corps entry group) facilitated a week of health-related activities with the children and staff!
A nutrition cooking demonstration was our first activity on the week's menu. First, we made our own peanut butter with the Malagasy orphanage cooks and nannies, then mashed some sweet bananas into it. We got to feed it to the babies for morning snack, and they went BONKERS for that stuff. One baby actually cried when we ran out of it! Then with enough vegetables to feed a small elephant, we went on to make a hearty, nutrient-rich soup. If you don't believe kids like eating vegetables, then you wouldn't have believed your eyes to see the kids slurpin' up this soup at lunch. But they did enjoy it, and so did the staff! (Shout out to my Volunteer friend Jenna, who was the mastermind behind our cooking plan).
Playing malaria-themed games with the young children was our second main activity for the week. To help teach the purpose and importance of mosquito bed nets, we spent an afternoon playing a fun freeze-tag game. (You can read the details about the game in the second half of my Stomping Out Malaria in Madagascar blog post). We all had a stellar time- it was all the buzz that day!
Our last two days at La Maison were dedicated to painting a health-themed wall mural in one of the kids bedrooms. We picked four tools for good health and self-care that the kids could easily implement everyday at the orphanage: washing hands, brushing teeth, sleeping under a bed net, and eating healthy food!
"Hmmm," you might be thinking to yourself, "that all sounds pretty grand, but it seems like you only did about three to four days of work when you were there for at least a week? Where'd the rest of the time go?"
Well, now 'tis the hour of confession: I think I spent more time holding the babies and playing with the kids than doing actual work. (But do I regret anything about that? Absolutely not). Aside from being overwhelmingly precious, the kids were also pleasantly well-behaved and polite. It was an outright joy to just spend some downtime with them. The kids definitely enjoyed it--and I think even needed it--too. While they are cared very well for at La Maison, it is still hard to show kids enough attention when there are so many of them. So I held them, played with them, sang to them...just because I knew they needed that love and comfort. I got to hang out with the older kids too (about five 12-year-olds), which ended up mostly consisting of ab exercises, play fighting, and an arm wrestling tournament hahahaha.
A week at the orphanage ended up being really good for me, too. Doing our activities and spending time with the kids sparked me with joy and vitality. It is said that the joy and laughter of children is contagious...and if that's so, I believe I caught a very serious case from them.
*A site-exchange is where Volunteers can visit another Volunteer's site to help conduct a project, event, or training.
So, do you actually EXCHANGE, or is it just a visit?
ReplyDeleteAlso, your "four days of work" sounds to me like two weeks of work....give yourself some credit, you superhero!
It's a visit, but usually it's specifically a visit that meets the needs for a certain skill set or program... for example, a volunteer trained in agriculture can visit the site of a health volunteer to do a training in gardening. Or in this case, we conducted health trainings at the site of an education Volunteer. So the exchange is in reference to sharing skills and information across sectors!
DeleteIt's a visit, but usually it's specifically a visit that meets the needs for a certain skill set or program... for example, a volunteer trained in agriculture can visit the site of a health volunteer to do a training in gardening. Or in this case, we conducted health trainings at the site of an education Volunteer. So the exchange is in reference to sharing skills and information across sectors!
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