We are working this month with an organization called Caminul Felix, they have family homes for abandoned or orphaned children in Romania, Thailand, and are working to build two new complexes in Zimbabwe. Each of these complexes houses anywhere from ten to sixteen families, each with a set of parents and varying numbers of children. I really love the way this organization is run, they recruit young couples who are interested in being house parents and then after an interviewing process invite them to live in one of the houses on campus and fill it with children they find on the street, in the hospitals, and in various state-run orphanages. This is NOT an orphanage, these children are raised as a family, and the parents do not get more children as theirs grow up, once a family has been raised and the children have become adults with jobs and families of their own a new set of parents are found and a new family moves into the house. Really cool, right?
We probably won’t be spending too much time with the kids, since they have a pretty set schedule, but hopefully we will be able to organize some fun nights for them at some point. Most of what we will be doing this month is construction, which has thus far consisted of shoveling and leveling piles of dirt around new houses being built. Really skilled labor, obviously.
I know you are all dying to know what our living situation is like this month, so I’ll be nice and tell you. I am once again being incredibly blessed by our living situation, we are staying in a rather lovely house which Caminul Felix built for its volunteers. There are twenty of us staying here (three teams, half our squad, nbd) so again we have multiple Amandas and Lin(d)seys (side note: I’m going to name my children absolutely ridiculous names so they won’t have these problems when they are on the World Race). We have a full kitchen with lots of pots and pans for cooking, a sweet family room, and hot showers, you can’t ask for more.
One girl from each team has sort of taken the role of chef/grocery shopper for each team so Steph, Emily Bouche, and I have now been to the grocery store twice and our $2 a day per person budget, lots of potatoes (25 kilos of potatoes cost roughly $6 USD) but we are also trying to get as much protein in there as possible so beans and as much chicken as our budget will provide.
Oh wait, I almost forgot about the Daves…we have two British gentlemen who are residing with us as well and they are both named Dave. I feel certain they will provide me with all sorts of fun stories to tell you in the coming month, so prepare yourself for some British humor.
Anyway this is our month is looking like so far, let me know what ya think!
Lindsey
