Below is an account of a typical day at our teams care point, Joyela. After we eat breakfast and get bundled up for the day, meaning many many layers on this chilly morning, we head to the bus with a polgna sandwich in hand. Yes, a polgna sandwich, as requested by our bus driver. We are bused to our care point and are quickly greeted by our sweet kiddos. A care point is a place within a community that kids are invited to come and play as well as get a free meal. We get to the care point around 10:45 in the morning and take a break for lunch at 12. Most of our kids come after lunch, and there tend to be around 75. As six American teens, the most important thing we can do for them is show them love. Here’s what loving the kids of Joyela looked like today…
Moriah: What was the first thing you saw when we got to Joyela?
Abby: I saw six kids and no Thuli and I thought we were getting pranked. (Thuli is the Shepard, or director, of the care point)
Kaitlyn: Haha I thought this was a scam, kinda like when I was trying to wash and dry my laundry in the rain this morning!
Megan:The first thing I noticed was that the little girl, Po was crying again. So I held her for a while, kept her warm, and loved on her even though she was wiping her snot on my jacket! When she got up, she kindly tried to wipe the snot off of me with her hands! She is so sweet! She is filled with energy but gets tired so quick!
Jessa: No kidding! Little Po slept on me for about 3 hours today!
Kaitlyn: Speaking of snot, there was a little boy asleep on the tire today that had a line of snot at least an inch and half long hanging from his nose! Not to mention there was three other little boys standing around him watching him sleep!
Jessa: Aww poor dude. All the kids are a little under-the-weather due to the cold!
There are only a few kids there at this point, most of them join us after school.
The kids line up, wash their hands and say the sweetest prayer before lunch. We help serve alongside of Thuli and then our team eats lunch on our own in the storage closet. We eat separately from the kids as to not highlight the differences between our meals and the kids meals. Rice and soy protein are provided by an organization and is prepared by the Gogos, a group of grandmas that help Thuli take care for the kids.
Megan: Thuli and I were sitting on the tires after lunch and I was asking her how she fell in love with Jesus. She said that she met Jesus when she was seven and that she grew up going to a nearby care point from ages 12-22. When she was young, she thought her shepard was the coolest person ever and she wanted to grow up and be just like her!
Kayla: Thuli is the best, she loves the kids so much! Its funny because she is so sweet, but she still disciplines them really well. Later in the day, I picked up this little boy and Thuli came up and took a picture because that particular boy rarely connects with people that aren’t Swazi. He was a nicely dressed kid with cute boots and an Elmo letterman jacket! His laugh was adorable and he was so sweet!
Kaitlyn: One of the girls I play with everyday, Nolishe, decided that my flyaways were really bad and tried to tame them with Vaseline! I had no idea what she was doing until it was too late!
Kayla: Oh my goodness, Nolishe, LOVES Kaitlyn. She is always sitting in her lap and its so cute.
Jessa:Oh man I almost dropped little Po today. I was on my way over to watch Moriah teach the kids ballet and I tripped over a tire! I had to make the decision to either drop the kid on the ground and catch myself or protect the kid and bust my behind on the ground. Long story short, I ended up fast on my back in the African dirt laughing with Po still safe in my arms!
Abby: That was so funny to watch! It was like watching a slo-mo video!
Moriah: Oh yeah! Kids in Swazi love to dance and they are so interested in American culture, so I started teaching them ballet, and I loved it! It started with five kids, but after a few minutes I had 20 kids lined up wanting to learn new dance moves!
Abby: Around this time the wind started picking up and the kids kept trying to hide their faces in our jackets, so me and Megan sat on the cinderblocks and just held the kids.
Megan: And of course it was the three kids that didn’t speak any English! The only thing we could say to each other was “I love you!” We said I love you back and forth at least 100 times!
Kayla: When the bus got there, all the kids want hugs and to say goodbye to all of us-some of them more than once! Nolishe always wants to escort Kaitlyn to get her stuff everyday.
Moriah: When we opened the bus we quickly realized that we were the dirtiest team on the bus, by a long shot! We looked two shades darker and we were covered in dirt!
In the end we left with smiles on our faces, dirt in our ears, Vaseline in our hair, boogers on our shirts, and love in our hearts. If you spend all day playing with kiddos and don’t get a little dirty, did you even have fun? Answer-no.
