Breakthrough

Too much to say. Not enough ways to say it. A clever writer could make this work.

Let's start with the title. Wednesday during reading tutoring, one of my students sounded out the word "always". Now, sounding out words is a concept that these kids are not familiar with. So, even though she sounded out the word perfectly, she didn't really recognize it. But first things first. The fact that she was able to sound out each letter, now that is a big deal! She didn't know the word, she assigned the correct sound to each letter and letter grouping. It was so exciting! I started to cry, I was so excited. The little girls were pretty thrown off by that. One of them said, "Stop Crying-O!". When I explained that I was excited and happy, they started laughing. We kept on until I could hear her saying the word. Told her the word was "always" and had her sound it out again. Then I made them get out of their chairs come outside and we danced around in celebration for a minute. That was a GREAT moment.

My first official football practice went really well. They were very receptive to the drills that we did, and were pretty respectful. I had one player do a lap for being to fresh with me. He calmed down after that. We will have to see how it goes on Tuesday.

The HIV/AIDS workshop is sounding like it won't happen. We've really hit a wall with the CBW administration, we'll have to see how that works out. I'm not sure that the story belongs online. I'll have to let you know more over e-mail or when I get home.

Ok. The whole nagging cold thing has finally come to a head. I went to the camp UNHCR clinic on Friday due to the fact that one of my throat lymphnodes was ridiculously swollen and not good. The doctor said that I have (I'm probably misspelling this) Pharengitis. No big deal. I'm taking antibiotics, (that I happened to already have in my possession since the ones the dr. perscribed are the same strong antibiotic that was given to me by passport health in the case of horrible runs), and should be feeling 100% by tonight. Whew! Glad to have it checked out, glad that it will be done with soon.

One benefit to meeting the Doctor is that he is involved with HIV/AIDS work on camp as well. Apparently, they are always looking for more help. His organization is doing a workshop this week on Sex and Gender Violence and he invited me to come help out if I can. We ended up getting into a conversation about how NGOs on camp end up wasting effort by overlapping services and how benificial it would be to get some more multi-organization efforts going. I'm think that this will be my focus for the final month.

Tonight will be the last Sunday night drink with Annie. She and I started the tradition back in October and it is distinctly weird that this will be the last one. Thursday is the leaving ceremony so I need to start getting my thoughts together about what to say about the people leaving in Guest House #1. Simon and I will have to work on that, since we are the only people currently living in our house that will remain at the end of the month.

I have had a couple of sad encounters with children lately. Occasionally, I'll have a conversation with someone about their time in Liberia or talk to a child who is having a hard day and it is like someone has pulled a rug out from under my feet. But then there are moments like "always" and they somehow balance out.

I just read an amazing book, 'Beloved' by Toni Morrison. I think it will be relevant to my experience next weekend. I think I am going to Elmina, where I will visit an old slave trading fort. That book, the fort, hearing about war torn Liberia and living on camp, you can't help but wonder about the breadth and depth of human cruelty.