Shots

Tuesdays and Fridays are immunization outreach days- we hop in the back of an “ambulance” and go hurtling down dirt roads to villages in the middle of nowhere and give immunizations to all the kids! Riding in the back of a huge van and riding on dirt through nothing but green green green is so incredibly fun! It makes me smile, every time. It’s absolutely beautiful here- hilly and SO green- not the dark pine green of East Texas, but the green of banana trees and papyrus and palm trees and plants I’ve never seen before… jungle green.

So, I have to tell you about last Friday! Ok, so first we get up and drive down one of the beautiful aforementioned roads, and then we get to this village- the site of our outreach is a church. And the church- it’s four walls, dirt floor covered with straw, rough wooden benches for pews. Along the wall are some cowhide drums. The woman who let us in grabs one of the drums, goes outside, and starts beating it. I ask what she’s doing… the answer? Alerting the people of the village that we have arrived. Sometimes, I just have to laugh, a lot, that this is really my life- I’m really in the middle of nowhere in a church with a straw floor and there is really a woman banging on a drum to let people know that we’re there. Craziness! I feel like I’m in a movie sometimes. So, then the moms and kids started coming! Right now, I’m not doing much on immunization days- just holding kids and stuff, but in the future, these are the villages where I will possibly go and do AIDS outreaches. For now, it’s just important that the people see me and meet me and know I’m here. Most of the time I don’t even realize how much I must stick out… if you grow up seeing all kinds of people, you don’t really think about how weird it must be to see a different-looking person in a sea of sameness. The kids here don’t shout and scream “muzungu,” they just stare, wide-eyed; sometimes the really little ones are afraid, other times they smile and laugh.