On Friday, our group spent the evening at a new pizza restaurant, Onyx, relatively close to our house (30-40 minute walk). A group of us, myself not included, had eaten there the previous night, and there was a rather pervasive rumor that the owner had offered to feed us all pizza for free if we came back the following night (and some tacked on free drinks). Naturally, we paid for all of it, but it was still good pizza nonetheless. I think it probably took up to two hours from the time of ordering for everyone to have their pizzas, but that’s not terribly out of the norm from what I’ve seen so far.
In the morning, we met with Ken (who’s been organizing the trip) at Onyx and began a 10 minute walk through some neighborhoods to one of AMU’s facilities. After coming through the gates, we were greeted by a number of kids who wanted to hug and shake hands. The kids were spread between a building and the lawn, and I went into the building (just a large open room with chairs and a stage) to essentially mingle. It started fairly cordially, with all of us sitting in a large circle, making necklaces and bracelets with pipe cleaners, and giving brief introductions. It then started moving closer to organized chaos, with the first step being the introduction of cameras. A number of us had brought cameras, and the kids were all over them. While the camera I brought has been nice for pocketability and basic shots, it’s not particularly valuable or high quality, and I had no problem handing it off to the kids (first to David, then to Frederick, then through an unknown number of hands before ending with Marcel). I was later asked if I had been worried about my camera being dropped or damaged, and I really wasn’t. By the end of our time there, I wound up with over 400 pictures, some actually pretty good and some of unrecognizably blurry blobs. But most of all, I had free photographers for the day, freeing up my hands in the process, and ending up with lots of pictures from kids’ points of views.
The move to disorder continued with the introduction of chalk and stickers. Things went fast, so I’m not actually sure how much chalk we handed out, but it seemed to keep a chunk of kids busy. As for the stickers, we had ample supply, and most of us were riddled with them by the end. Even the empty sticker sheets became “masks,” and I was still finding hidden stickers in the shower last night (thankfully I found all of the ones on visible skin, so I didn’t end up with any flower shaped tan lines).
After all of that, we rearranged chairs in the building to face the stage, and the kids had a couple songs to sing (with two men on keyboard and tambourine off to the side). This was followed by a dance competition between select kids from prearranged “groups” and some MSU students. The festivities were wrapped up by bringing us up on stage to introduce ourselves (name, age, and state of origin) and sing a song for the kids. This part definitely wasn’t preplanned, and we ended up singing an A capella rendition of I Want it That Way by the Backstreet Boys... for whatever reason. Before sending everyone home for the day, we served them lunch and hung out a little longer.
Throughout the process, you wouldn’t know the kids had HIV/AIDS. They were just normal kids having a good time, doing kung-fu poses for the camera and attempting to imitate Michael Jackson (the young version that sang and danced, not the one that hung children over balconies). I ended up losing my sunglasses in the process ($10 Walmart special), but I’d say I lost more than that. It looks like I’ll be leaving a piece of my heart in Rwanda
-Scott
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| One plus with handing off my camera is that I actually got to be in some pictures rather than hiding behind the camera. Here being sported by the probable perpetrator, you can see that I decorated my sunglasses with pipe cleaners before handing them off. Also, if you check out my neck, you can also see a necklace that they made for me. Since they put it on while I wasn't looking, I honestly didn't see how color coordinated it was until after I took it off to avoid a necklace tan line (orange with white and black). Pretty impressive. |
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