Last Week Volunteering

Well, I cant believe I am saying this, but today was a very, very bittersweet goodbye to volunteering at Sinethemba.  Through all the frustrating times and all the chaos, in the end, volunteering defiantly taught me a lot.  Today, since it was our last day, and somehow, none of the kids had homework, we did fun things!  We brought suckers for all the kids and also, thanks to my fantastic boss at Martins Sport Shop in Nisswa, we made snow! None of the kids had ever seen, let alone touched anything like snow before, so they went WILD for it!  They had a huge "snowball" fight and things got a little bit crazy, but it is defiantly the happiest I have ever seen this kids.  It was a great feeling to see them all laughing, playing and just simply having fun together.

Making the snow...

Stirring it up!

Snow FIGHT!

LOVING the "snow"

The snow created many smiles!

Snow fight round II!

After the snow and the snow fights, a bunch of the kids got a hold of my camera again, and enjoyed taking lots of pictures!  Here are just a few:

Lashay, with "snow" in her hair!

She got snow in her hair, so the corn-rows had to go!

Bye-bye corn-rows!

Lashay and I!

Haley with a bunch of the kids from Sinethemba!

Cutie-Pies!!  The youngest girls at Sinethemba, about age 3

SUCH a CUTIE!

Also a total cutie.  His laugh makes EVERYBODY laugh :)

Today was by far the happiest day at Sinethemba and I am so thankful things were able to end on such a happy note.  There are so many things I learned from this experience I dont even know where to begin.  First, although I some what knew it before, volunteering taught me even more that life is never, ever what you expect it to be.  I went into Sinethemba with expectations and ideas of what it might be like (which may or may not have been a mistake) and not only did it turn out COMPLETELY different, but because of that, it changed my life.  Some times its best to go in with no expectations, with a completely open mind and just learn and let life happen.  Sometimes we really have absolutely no control over what it going to happen, but that can be a wonderful thing.  Secondly, although during the middle of my volunteering time I was the furthest from believing this, one random act of kindness, one simple helpful thought put toward something that seems impossible really does help.  Call me a sucker, call me naive, call me idiotic, thats fine-because it probably sounds that way, but I truly believe that doing good things for other people, no matter how small can have an impact.  A lot of times, although I may have not helped these kids much with the homework they had, I can honestly say I did my best to simply be their friend, which I think goes a long way.  These kids live in a place where there are over 30 children, of all ages, with only a few people raising them.  They go to school where the classes are too large to give individual children attention and then they come home to complete chaos.  This is my own personal judgement, but I think that maybe sometimes the kids really just need a friend.  Lastly, this experience has shown me that it really is the little things in life that really matter.  At the end of the day cars and technology, money and possessions arnt going to be what matters most in life (or at least it shouldnt be) its going to be the experiences you have and what you did with your time.  I have noticed that since the kids dont have cell phone, computers or really a whole lot of anything, they spend time with each other, make up clever games to keep themselves entertained and they are constantly finding and discovering new things.  They notice things in life that I never would.  One of the other blog posts I had about Lashay, and what she told me about being an artist really hit home.  Sometimes its not all about what you have in life.
I think overall, this experience really did change my life.  At times I wont lie, it was sad, frustrating and chaotic but I walked away today knowing that Sinethemba and the kids there are something I will never forget and that even though there were bad times, it was all worth it.