Safrica Day 11

Late again. Now there is a surprise. You would think that we would be on-time for one of our last days working for ADP. We wound up staying up pretty late by the fireplace doing nothing. The three-minute showers followed by breakfast on-the-run have pretty much become a routine around here.

Regardless of our late start, we managed to make good time on the trip over to the office and out to our respective sites. It looked as though Dominic and Santosh would have another day full of kids as they were already lined up in greater numbers when they arrived. Jenny and I looked like we would have to make up yesterday’s relatively slow day as well. We started whittling down our line of children and fortunately were able to work through those kids before 10:30am. However, they started transporting kids over from the other sites to us to redistribute the work. They were moving about twenty-five kids at a time – all crammed in the same van we took on a daily basis. It was quite the site. We were able to work through about three transports full of children before lunch. We had planned on taking a lunch break, before receiving another load of children, but decided it would be much more prudent to have lunch in the taxi as they moved us to other sites. So, we piled they last sixteen kids we assessed, a couple of the ADP workers, Jenny and myself into the van and carted us off. Jenny went to help Dominic and Santosh in Saxon Sea and they took me to Masakhane to help Jena, Rose and Elana with the massloads of toddlers they had there.

We got to Masakhane and it truly was chaos. I thought I was going to eat when I got there, but it rapidly became obvious that there was just no time for lunch. There was a preschool full of kids that needed to be assessed. Kids were screaming and playing in the back while others were lined up to be examined. Luckily, most of these kids were fine, but there were also the complicated cases that were further drawn out by the fact that these kids were so young and needed a more comprehensive exam. That and being one of our last days of exams, we were nearly out of most of our disposable equipment. Otoscopes were dying, speculum tips were becoming a valued commodity and we had managed to break nearly every mercury thermometer we had. Despite these issues, more and more help arrived and we managed to clear out the daycare in a timely fashion.

Having completed all of our business for today, we again headed back to the ADP office where they gave us the update of which sites had been finished and which still had children that needed to be evaluated. The sties that hadn’t been completed would be finished tomorrow during our short day of work. They also informed us that there was some sort of debacle at the radio interview this afternoon. When we first arrived, they told us that the local radio station had requested an interview with some of our group. So, Dominic said he had some broadcasting experience and would like to go. Aaron also expressed interest so he also went. Since there was already some tension building in the power-struggle arena, I thought it would be prudent to have Jena go as the third person. So, I don’t know what happened, but I’m sure we will find out at some point in time.

The staff then also informed us that they had arranged for us to have transportation to Canal Walk, a nice mall area, for dinner. We had thought that this meant that they would be joining us but we found out that this was not the case. This met with mixed reviews as we had wished to spend more time with the workers. However, it became apparent that while the idea was a good one, we would not be able to arrange transport for the volunteers from Atlantis to Canal Walk. However, we were able to treat our driver, Isaac, whom we have terrorized and undoubtedly annoyed with our chronic tardiness. The restaurant, Ocean Basket, was delicious and by the end of dinner, we were all stuffed and somewhat lethargic from all the food.

Upon our return to the hostel, we found ourselves in our familiar places in front of the fireplace in hopes of soothing our bloated bellies by the fire. There, we noticed Claudia cutting cardboard boxes into poster-sized sections. She said that her mother asked her to fashion signs that would aid in directing participants to the UFO convention tomorrow. We were initially puzzled and wondered if she actually meant something else when she said, “UFO.” In this case, she didn’t. Betsy was helping run a UFO convention. All weirdness aside, she recruited us to help with signage and we gladly obliged. It was a fun detour from our usual routine and by the end of the night, we had helped create ten original masterpieces.