Irine Rossouw volunteered on our Vulnerable Children and Rural Family Support programme for eight weeks. As the first volunteer on this new programme she has had a lot of input into how we developed the projects over the last two months. We are pleased to say that Irine is now a part of the African Impact team in Cape Town as their new Volunteer Coodinator, we know she will be fantastic! Before she left for Cape Town she wrote us one final blog describing her time here in St. Lucia.
The two months that I have spent working
as a volunteer with African Impact in St. Lucia have been the best of my life.
At home in Canada, I was a newly
graduated nurse and working towards a successful career in my hometown near
Vancouver. After one year of working, I got the itch to travel and decided to
come to St. Lucia to volunteer on one of the community projects. It's something
that I've never done before, and I was looking forward to spending some time
doing meaningful work. I never imagined that my time there would influence my
life so dramatically in the best way possible.
My first week in St. Lucia was filled
with information and jumping straight into projects. I quickly learned that an
open-minded and adaptable attitude was the key to having the best experience
here. With that in mind, I started immersing myself in the projects and felt
comfortable and at home by the end of my second week.
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| Irine looking after a sleepy baby at creche. |
One of the first projects that I did was
working in the baby rooms at the crèche. This crèche was located in Khula, and
two volunteers worked in the crèche teaching the pre-school aged children,
while two of us were in the baby room looking after younger children who
weren't quite old enough for the preschool. I'm talking kids who were 3 months
old to 3 years old.
Our main jobs in the baby room included playing with the
babies, changing nappies, wiping noses, and just keeping them out of trouble in
general. Our aim was to play games that focused on building the babies
developmental levels, and praising them for reaching milestones, such as
walking, throwing balls back to us, even just mimicking our facial expressions
or sounds that we made.
Since the first week, I have been working in three
different baby rooms and have seen the children's confidence levels completely
build, and I loved being a part of this project.
Other projects that I did working with
the children was holiday club and after school clubs. I'll talk about these
projects together because they were quite similar. Holiday club went on during
the school winter holidays for the kids. We worked for two weeks in Ezwenelisha
and one in Khula, and every day was so different! We had random numbers of
kids, ages 5 to 16, and one day we even had 150 kids at holiday club in
Ezwenelisha! It was crazy, but so much fun. We did crafts, face painting, and
played games like the Olympics.
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| Irine organising the kids at Khula After School Club |
At the end of each of the clubs we did talent
shows, and so many of the kids were awesome dancers and singers. After school
club happens twice a week during school, and we also do crafts and games with
the kids.
It's amazing how much energy kids have after a full day of school.
You could see how much they loved having a project to do after school. When we
did some crafts like making bookmarks, everyone wanted to do about 10 each, but
we didn't have enough materials for that so they would just use whatever they
could find and glue things together.
Not exactly part of our plan, but the kids
were having fun so we just rolled with that. I also realized early on that
things don't go according to plan more often than not at projects; it's one of
those things that you just have to be alright with and everything will work out
at the end of the day.
Girls club also happened after school
once a week. It consisted of 30 girls in 7th grade, and was aimed at empowering
them and giving them a strong female voice in the community. We did crafts and
games with them, and we also talked about inspiring female influences while I
attended the club.
The girls were so excited to have the opportunity to speak
freely with us, and they were genuinely happy to be there.
Some of my best memories of projects come
from the support groups. I was lucky enough to be a part of three different
support groups during my stay. The first one that I went to was Khula support
group, which is a group of mostly women in the community who get together every
Tuesday morning.
We discussed so many different topics, including English
classes, hand care, medical issues, and even knitting. We delivered any topic
that the group wanted to hear about, and they were really receptive to the
information that we provided.
There were always many questions asked, and
people would share difficult experiences and receive feedback from the
volunteers and the group. It's nice to know that even if the volunteer
organization wasn't able to continue working in Khula or Ezwenelisha, the
support groups would still exist and be a safe place for community members to
talk with each other.
Another support group in Khula was the Mother's support
group, which was for mothers or grandmothers and their babies. We delivered
similar topics to the ones at Khula support group, and we also incorporated
some interactions with mothers and their babies such as massages and exercises.
The support group in Ezwenelisha was a bit of a different experience during my
stay, mostly because we were building a massive garden for them to use.
Every
wednesday, we would go to Ezwenelisha and pick up support group members to help
us with the garden. We started by digging holes in very tough ground for the
fence posts, and ended with planting seeds and watering the garden. The fence
and garden signs went up while I was there, and it was extremely satisfying to
see the finished product.
Another project that was almost
completely different from the baby room was working on home assistance. I'll
put this project in the "manual labour" category because it
definitely wasn't easy work!
During this project, we would go with one of our Zulu coordinators, Nokwethemba, and figure out who in the community needed our
help with house work and gardening. We would do whatever the residents needed
from us, which would sometimes be washing dishes and cleaning the house,
laundry, weeding, and ironing clothes.
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| Putting the finishing touches to the ramp. |
One morning we even built a ramp for a
disabled child in the community at her home. The people that we were helping
didn't have the means or the energy to do those things, and they were always so
appreciative of our help, even though we were doing basic, everyday chores.
Speaking of manual labour, brick building
was probably the best work out I will ever get in my life. We would go with
Zakhele, another coordinator, to our brick building headquarters next to
Inkanyezi creche and start the process.
First, we would fill up a wheelbarrow
with sand about 4 times, then we would mix the sand and cement together and add
water until it became a good consistency, We would put the cement into brick
moulds and carefully set the bricks out to dry in the sun.
It was so satisfying
to see 28 bricks at the end of our day, but it was heart breaking when one of
your bricks would break! The bricks that the volunteers make are used for many
building projects that African Impact organizes.
Last year, the bricks were
used to build a classroom for one of the communities so that they could have a
proper creche for the children in the area. The bricks that are being made now
are for the rest of the Inkanyezi creche, so that they can have bathrooms, a
kitchen and a baby room. It's awesome to know that the bricks that I worked
hard to make are going to build a necessary part of the creche.
We were also with Zakhele for bed
building, which is exactly what it sounds like, and garbage pick-up. We went to
Khula a few times to walk around an area and pick up all of the garbage that
was there. We managed to fill about 30 bags all together in the 3 sessions that
I was there. It was inspiring to see the community members come together to
keep Khula clean.
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| Students of Banana Box with their certificates |
One week I was able to teach HIV
education at a local business in St. Lucia. This project was different from
anything that i've done so far, and it was weird to be teaching in St. Lucia
after spending most of my time in Khula and Ezwenelisha!
We did a three day
course at one of the grocery stores, and had 4 students in the class that I
taught. We would go through an approved book and show videos that educated the
employees on HIV.
We included how HIV is spread, what AIDS is, how to prevent
getting HIV and treatment. At the end of the course, the students did a test to
show their understanding of the information and to get a certificate.
Everyone
passed their test, which made the course a huge success! There is at least one
of those courses taught every week, whether it is in the communities or in St.
Lucia itself. Slowly, African Impact is teaching everyone around the town about
HIV awareness!
The last part of every week was always
the best because it was reading club. Every Friday, reading club would happen
at this massive shipping container in Khula. The container is sort of a mini
library for the kids, and all of the books are colour coded to their reading
abilities. Kids of all ages would join us and read to us individually, and we
would keep track of the books that they read.
There were bronze, silver, and
gold awards given to kids who read a certain amount of books with volunteers. I
was fortunate enough to be there when the first two gold certificates went out
to two young girls.
The gold awards meant that the kids were able to read with
other children as well as being able to "rent" some of the books and
take them home. The girls were so proud of their gold certificates, and we were
overjoyed to give them out.
The rest of my St. Lucia experience was
spent at the house with many other volunteers and the coordinators. We spent
time planning events, researching topics, planning creche lessons and
activities for the kids, cooking, and sharing experiences.
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| Having fun at creche! |
The group of people
that surrounded the volunteers was amazing. Everything we asked, they had
answers to, and every problem or issue there was, they would solve it or find
some way to support us. They were sisters, mothers, managers, friends and
shrinks for every single volunteer, and we could reach out to them at any time
during our stay. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and still manage to
have energy to entertain us! As previously mentioned, these past two
months have been absolutely incredible. Everything I have done here has
exceeded all of my expectations, and this will definitely not be my last time
volunteering at African Impact.
I fell in love with the projects and all of the
amazing people that I've met here. The passion and determination of every
volunteer is something to be admired, and I feel lucky to have been apart of
such a well-organized project that truly makes a difference in the lives of the
people around St. Lucia.
- Irine Rossouw
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