The Project
Our project seems pretty obvious -- we were, after all the Zimbabwe Eyeglass & Medical Team, we actually discovered once we arrived at Boot Camp that we would be building a dorm room on the Teen Mission base as well, but once we were in Zimbabwe, the plan changed again. We had been booked every possible day for our evangelism and clinics! We were all very excited. Every day (other than the Lord's day of course), we'd pile into a tiny little "truck" bed and travel at least an hour to a new primary school. Often, we'd arrive and see a huge long line of mostly elderly people already waiting for us. We'd set up our eyeglass clinic -- depending on the amount of people, we'd have 2-4 lines going -- and our first aid clinic (from bandages to ibuprofen to muscle rub) and split the team between the two. Everyday we'd rotate and there were definitely busier days than others; we were quite the busy bees! After we had treated every single person, we worked with the schoolchildren.
At Boot Camp, we had learned a couple dramas, how to do puppet shows, and which songs to sing, so we did that presentation every day. We'd often change up the songs, but their absolute favorite that always got the kids excited and giggling was the "Banana Song". After that, we split the kids up by age and everyone took a group (sometimes 2-4 of us to a group) and played all kinds of games with them. We taught them Duck Duck Goose (they have a very similar game called "Eggie is Broken" where they place a round object ("the eggie") at the person that they want to try to tag them), we played Simon Says, which definitely was tough with a bit of a language barrier (they have two major languages there -- Shona and Dbele -- though most people speak some English), we played Red Light, Green Light, a game called River Bank, and another called Do as I Do.
Those darling kids were my absolute favorite part of our project. As much as I loved caring for the people through first aid, and helping them through providing eyeglasses, I absolutely adored playing with the joyful, precious little kids, They were always so excited to see us, and even happier to touch us! Sometimes we'd have 20 little ones on our arms, with a few extra tugging on our hair and giggling -- they'd often try to rub our skin (we later learned that they were taught that all white people were actually black people underneath; so they'd try to find our black skin by 'rubbing our white off'). There were a couple times when they'd try to take us away with them, once there were so many of them trying to take one of my team mates home with them that they were able to lift him up off the ground and carry him around; we all thought it was absolutely hilarious! I will miss them so much.
At Boot Camp, we had learned a couple dramas, how to do puppet shows, and which songs to sing, so we did that presentation every day. We'd often change up the songs, but their absolute favorite that always got the kids excited and giggling was the "Banana Song". After that, we split the kids up by age and everyone took a group (sometimes 2-4 of us to a group) and played all kinds of games with them. We taught them Duck Duck Goose (they have a very similar game called "Eggie is Broken" where they place a round object ("the eggie") at the person that they want to try to tag them), we played Simon Says, which definitely was tough with a bit of a language barrier (they have two major languages there -- Shona and Dbele -- though most people speak some English), we played Red Light, Green Light, a game called River Bank, and another called Do as I Do.
Those darling kids were my absolute favorite part of our project. As much as I loved caring for the people through first aid, and helping them through providing eyeglasses, I absolutely adored playing with the joyful, precious little kids, They were always so excited to see us, and even happier to touch us! Sometimes we'd have 20 little ones on our arms, with a few extra tugging on our hair and giggling -- they'd often try to rub our skin (we later learned that they were taught that all white people were actually black people underneath; so they'd try to find our black skin by 'rubbing our white off'). There were a couple times when they'd try to take us away with them, once there were so many of them trying to take one of my team mates home with them that they were able to lift him up off the ground and carry him around; we all thought it was absolutely hilarious! I will miss them so much.