During our all-squad month at El Shaddai I encouraged my squad to not bring out their cameras until the second half of the month. We are working with kids who see volunteers come and go constantly, around 9 months out of the year. What does that say about love? To a child it could say I only love you enough to be in your life for a month before I need to go on to bigger and better things. Throw a camera in the mix and you’re only there to get a profile picture. We may turn our cameras around and show them the picture but they don’t get a copy of it and they don’t have a facebook to go like it and later show their friends.
My greatest fear this month was having children think I was only there to get something from them.
Then the founder of El Shaddai gave me complete media freedom to do whatever I wanted to help tell stories for marketing and I was on the cusp of my greatest fear. I prayed each day, “God, what story am I supposed to tell?” Sounds cheesey, but it’s how I stayed focused. What happened was amazing. He expanded my eye even more to the little things, like beautiful, dirty toes of kids that never wear shoes; the callused hands of little girls who chop wood for their friends for school each day; the amazing toys made from scraps of wire; and the dust that falls as we pounded chunks of colored cornstarch into powder for a home-made color run. Many of these small things that I enjoyed I didn’t catch on a camera.
I had two best friends named Ziki and Nomphilo who read Judy Blume to me, helped me get two blisters from wood chopping, never got tired of playing cards or telephone Pictionary, and loved to type stories on my phone. I adored my time with them. I only had my camera out one day, the rest of the time we were just friends. The rest of my days were spent following my squad around and seeing their small moments. My squad loved so well.
My story this month is a compilation of everyone’s story. While my teammates saw the children 3 hours day, as I compiled videos of appreciation, fundraising and storytelling, I felt like I was with the children constantly. I didn’t see that gift coming.
(Videos to come later. BIG files…itty bitty bandwidth.)
