All In A Day's Work

Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007

WOW. Today was an amazing day. I finally felt like I was here to do what I came for. Kind of hard to explain - but I'll try. Even though I tried to eliminate all kinds of expectations before coming here, I constantly had this picture in my mind of what I'd be doing, and today was the realisation of that picture. Note that when I say "picture" I mean an actual picture - a certain scene, certain colours, certain people, etc. It was one of those moments where your imagination, your dreams, and reality combine and you feel extremely balanced, and centred, and like everything has come full circle. It was incredible. And it's set in motion events that are probably going to last until the end of my internship. I shall explain.

Okay, so I think I mentioned before that part of what CTM does, is the teenagers/early-twentysomethings go around to various villages and perform skits and songs that aim to sensitise the local populations about children's rights. Today was our first trip out to a couple of the villages - the entire day I had this sense of well-being and wholesomeness. A couple of posts ago I was sort of down and out about the state of the world, but today was like the universe's reply to that - because I saw things, and met people, which reassured me that nothing is static. Progress is being made whether we realise it or not; there are good people in the world - lots of them! And they're doing great things. And even if we don't come into contact with a lot of them, there are forces beyond us, working behind the scenes, making things happen.

I travelled with the Director, and a few of the performers - a very long ride in a rickety old car in the scorching heat, but the entire experience was non-stop enjoyable. We all met up at 6.30am, but good old African time did it's thing and we hit the road at about 8.30am. Fine though (I almost said that I'm getting used to African time, but I'd be lying - getting better slowly though).

Me and a couple of the guys in the skits - Selom (yellow) and Dwak (white):

Squished in the backseat in the rickety old car (clearly I'm pondering some weighty questions about the world [I was actually thinking about how I'd kill for a Coke at this point])

You're probably going to have a really hard time finding me in this picture since I blend in so well.

Outside the home of the village chief

I was very apprehensive about accepting this drink since it smelled like nail polish remover. They assured me there was no alcohol, so I took a sip, nearly died, and thought it was better to leave it at that.

This guy next to me, Selom, is a life-saver. He's become my personal interpreter and it's been SUCH an enormous help. At this event they were talking about the importance of registering births and issuing birth certificates for children, and how that will affect their rights and opportunities in the future - as you can see I'm concentrating very very hard. Oh yes.

What I loved about today was that I saw in front of me people taking initiative to address issues in their communities, and they did it in a way that wasn't blaming anyone, or scolding anyone. It was light-hearted, informative (based on the translation I got), and seeing the looks on the faces of the audience was really cool - lots of nodding and sounds of agreement, lots of smiles, just a very positive atmosphere in general. We're going again tomorrow, and I can't wait. I'm determined now to learn more sentences in Ewe so that I can have some simple conversations with the locals. "My name is Rasha, I live in New Zealand" leaves more to be desired, plus I feel very lame ending it at that.

Will keep posting more pics and more of my rantings! Hope they're not heinously boring :D
By the way, does the system of most recent blog post to least recent post bother anyone else? I find it very unnatural, even though I know it's meant to be more logical. But still. Annoying.