Dancing in the RAIN!

Yesterday (Monday) afternoon Helen took us over to Blair Athol to help set up for Cultural Awareness Training. (Morgan and I that is.) We helped as people came in and got registered. There is nothing that makes one feel more important than being responsible for collecting the money. I think it gave some of the people who attended that wrong impression that I was in charge too. Good thing I was able to sort out most of the issues anyway. The Training was a presentation on the issues surrounding working with Sudanese refugees. The first portion talked about the background that Sudanese refugees are coming from, which includes Darfur. This was a big help in making a connection for me, since I've heard quite about Darfur frequently, if not in depth. I learned about the fact that generally there are 2 places accepting refugees, the US and Australia. Of 20 million refugees, 20% are Sudanese. That is actually a really large percentage considering that of 53 states in Africa, 23 are currently in conflict and producing refugees. That is just on the African continent, imagine how many more countries there are in Europe and Asia that are in some sort of conflict right now too! The most interesting (and thought provoking) topic that was covered, though, was the issue of differences between Gender roles in each culture and the extent that that can affect different issues. For example, when a family comes here, the oldest female in the household is expected to do all the cleaning and cooking and other housework. Men don't do these things in African culture. Imagine being a school age girl who is the oldest female with those responsibilities. You would need to do all of those things before working on school work or going to class. Also, domestic abuse is also not illegal and expected in African culture. That could cause major issues when a family moves here and suddenly has authorities being called on them because the husband is hitting his wife or mom is hitting her children. There is a very good chance that they would not even understand charges being put against them. There are also major differences in perceptions of the roles of teachers. In African cultures there is a definite perception that a child must be raised by an entire community, therefore, when a child is at school the teacher is responsible to for dealing with behaviors and other issues. In western cultures, one of the first things that we do is call a child's parent. Just some food for thought. Overall it was a great presentation and it even included further information on resources that might help professionals working with Sudanese refugees. I was glad to have been able to be a part of it. Helene brought us back to Hosanna Heights and the rest of the night went smoothly. We concentrated on packing up and getting ready for our shifting of house to take place today (Tuesday).

By the end of the day Monday it had started to rain. It continued to rain through the night and it is still drizzling now at 2pm on Tuesday. This is quite amazing considering it has been quite some time since anyone has seen real rain. It also meant that I called to ask for a ride since it was pouring. Sue picked me up at 11:30 so I could go with her to meet one of her clients on a home visit. We went to the house and were invited in. The house was pretty dirty, and following Sue's lead I picked up a bit and tidied as we went through things. I played a bit with the daughter and read with her until she decided to act up a bit and started hitting me with things. I was pretty much done after she hit me in the head with a plastic toy bin lid. It actually hurt. I just chose to continue tidying up rather than play with her, which I think got the message across. The mom needed a ride into the city so Sue dropped me off back at the office to make sure that I was around when we needed to be going to move things from our rooms at Hosanna Heights. That's really all that is new for now. I am excited to hopefully have Internet at Helen's house when we get there and to hopefully hear news on my computer soon.