The past few days at the school have been fairly successful! I discovered a small canvas and paint so I decided we should make a little painting as a souvenir I could take home from the students. I don’t know about you but I love making handprints and it’s a fairly easy art project, minus the messy part. I started off with painting Collins’ hand.
Collins has wiggled his way into my heart. I have mentioned him before but I haven’t gone in depth. We don’t know what his disability is exactly but we’ve been told he gets seizures at times, although he thankfully hasn’t had an episode at school, but the last time he had a seizure he fell into a fire. You can’t really tell but he definitely has some burns on his face and arms, he also has scars that clearly came from some sort of knife but we don’t know the story behind that either. We know very little about these students but their health often worries Jen and I. According to Dan (a worker for NVS and United for Parody), he has also been falling a few times a day and after he falls he becomes very aggressive. Now, don’t let the thinness of Kenyans fool you, they are ridiculously strong. The thing about Collins is that he doesn’t realize his own strength, he can high-five you and you’d be throbbing for a good ten minutes. Despite some challenges, and the fact that he barely speaks any English...he is such an entertaining guy to watch. Ever the drama queen he likes to stretch his entire body by standing up and then slowly contorting his body until he ends up in this pile of limbs on the floor...we all just kind of stare at him with our heads tilted in curiosity...quite the scene. He also only usually responds to anything you say with “Mm” in varying tones but when he smiles, nothing else matters because when he is happy, everybody is happy. He was fascinated that I was glopping paint onto his hand and the fact that he got to make his handprint twice was miraculous to him. The best part, though, is that when I asked him to pick out a paint color, he started counting the paints...I haven’t heard his voice since the day I got there besides when he introduces himself. I got so excited you would think I was going crazy but it was so sweet to hear him counting out loud! After Collins I helped Gertrude and Elizabeth make their handprints, and finally, my main man Martin did his. For awhile he would just shake his head when I asked if he would make the handprint for me but I knew he couldn’t refuse. It has truly been a great few days at school because Martin has been in such a great mood. He has been helping translate instructions to the other students...he’s even led them all in song. Jen and I had our jaws on the floor when Martin started to sing...such a beautiful voice to hear, especially when we don’t hear it so often.
Now I have to admit, I was a complete tourist for today. Myself, along with a few other volunteers went to the elephant orphanage, giraffe park, and monkey park (again). We started with the elephants...SO ADORABLE. We watched them get fed their milk and play around in the dust for an hour. The orphanage rescues these elephants whose mothers have died either of natural causes or from poachers. Unfortunately, poaching has only gotten worse in Kenya because of the high demand for ivory and with the amount of souvenirs I have seen made out of ivory...I’m not surprised. These elephants stay at the orphanage for a few years and then they are released back into the wild where they are then adopted into a new family, so there is a happy ending for the sweet babies:). Next we went to the giraffe park which is where, basically, you stand facing (quite literally face to face) giraffes who walk up to the tall porch you’re on and eat pellets out of your hand and out of your mouth (if you want to kiss them). Naturally, I wanted to kiss the giraffe because when am I ever really going to kiss a giraffe again. The first time scared me because their tongues are huge and they just wipe across your whole face, but then after the third and fourth time, I think I was a natural. What a talent to acquire abroad...hey, yea, that one time in Africa...I learned how to kiss giraffes...I had my fair share of fun and ended the day back with our monkey friends who were greedy as ever...but there’s just something about a monkey I cannot resist! This week has flown by and I can and can’t believe that I’ve been here for 2 and a half weeks already...what?!
I guess I’ll end with my proud moment of the week which was when I finally didn’t get ripped off at a market and haggled my way to buying baby presents...I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find any gender neutral baby items...yea, now the problem is I can’t STOP finding them... :)
