Yesterday I had a great day at placement. I love seeing the kids every day and knowing that I’m helping to teach them new things. I also love knowing that thanks to Liz’s curriculum they are making progress with their learning and building up new information every day. It’s incredibly rewarding.
After placement we stopped by TAFCOM to pick up the orders we placed for the women to sew us. Almost everything came back wrong – they used the wrong fabrics for things, made things the wrong size and not like we asked for… Apparently this has never happened before so I’m wondering if it’s related to me and Mike leaving. I hope not, because most of the stuff that was ruined isn’t for us.
At home base we did our own long written reviews of our time here with CCS (I can’t believe it’s almost over!) Afterwards Liz pulled everyone aside separately and told us about what had happened to a fellow volunteer who left CCS suddenly last week.
This girl had been here with CCS and was near the end of her 12 week commitment and worked at Magereza. One day after lunch she left crying, mumbling about a family emergency, and never came back. It turns out that Liz had caught her stealing cash from her purse while volunteering at Magereza, and when confronted she blamed it on the kids. It’s enough to make you sick. Liz took her back to home base early that day and had meetings with everyone at CCS from Mama Fatuma to the administration in NYC. The volunteer was kicked out, and Liz demanded that they inform her parents about what happened.  I should add that this volunteer just finished high school and met a boyfriend while in Moshi. He is known to take advantage of volunteers sexually and for money. She gave CCS a fake number for her parents, and left to go stay with the boyfriend. When Liz found this out she was furious, but CCS in NYC refused to help her because she is over 18 and they claim no responsibility for her. Liz hired a private investigator to find the parents herself, and called immigration to have the girl deported back to the US (we are all here on volunteer visas, and as she is no longer volunteering she is not allowed to stay in the country). There’s a new rumor going around now that CCS only kicked her out until Liz leaves, and then she’ll be allowed to reenter the program. The whole thing, from the girl stealing to blaming the kids, to the lack of response from CCS to Liz hiring an investigator is so disheartening. I thought that since everyone was here to volunteer nothing like this would happen. I guess that’s what you get when you let your 18 year old daughter leave home for the first time and she goes to Africa generally unsupervised for 12 weeks!
In the afternoon we had a traditional dance presentation. It was a group of drummers and two male and two female dancers. I loved the music and the male dancing was impressive. The girls didn’t do much besides swaying their hips to the rhythm. The guys were doing all kinds of crazy jumps and near acrobatic moves. At the end they pulled us up to dance with them, and it was really fun.
Afterwords we drank a few bottles of wine together in the CCS courtyard (a violation of a major policy, but I don’t think any of the staff are going to challenge Liz on anything until she leaves). After dinner Edward picked up me, Mike and the sisters. He left us at a bar and we had a great time. Back at CCS we took a ton on rapid-take pictures to commemorate Mike’s last night.