PAMA: Day 1 -- "The White Man's Show"

Blogger's note: RAD didn't blog on 08-06, as it was travel day for the team.

08-07 blog

Well, it's not exactly like I expected, but then that probably shouldn't be a surprise to me or anybody else by now.

Once we got rolling this morning we made the totally crazy drive out to the village. It's about 34 km, which is 6/10 of a mile to the kilometer, so that comes down to a little over 18 miles, not a lot of ground to cover, unless, of course, you consider the kind of road we are traveling on.

Total drive time to get to Pama from where we were, about 2 hours, which comes out to an average speed of right around 9 miles an hour. I wonder what's an average Amish speed to Walmart anyway?

The road was filled with major crevices, large puddles, and bumps upon bumps, just to give you an idea. In the car I was riding in, Pastor Tom handled the road like a true champion.

Once we arrived at the village the sites were similar to many of the smaller villages we had driven through, except the village of Pama is much larger.

It was clear that the local people were expecting us as there were some lining the streets as we pulled into town where we were met with cheers and applause. I have to admit it's somewhat of an awkward feeling when people are looking at your car and waving at you, cheering. Often I found myself looking over my shoulder figuring there surely must be someone else behind me that really deserves this kind of welcome. It was a humbling, but warm feeling to be so welcomed.

Once we pulled into the place we would be setting up camp we got a quick look around, saw some fellas making cement blocks, what was the old school and the current structure of the new school that is in progress that we have come to help with. Tom introduced us to the school director, some of the teachers, and other people of the church and village.

Once the word was out that the white people were in town, admittedly my first time feeling entirely like a minority, many, many adults and children came to the place where we would be setting up camp for the week. They kept coming and coming and we all sort of got the feeling that white people in town was a pretty big deal. Everything we did, everywhere we went, a crowd just sort of moved with us. Lots of eyes watching our every move, sort of staring, whispering amongst themselves about the things they were seeing.

It was sort of cool in the beginning, a bit awkward, but cool. However as the hours in the day began to click away I could sense some of the team becoming a bit unnerved by the constant staring of many, many people at our every move. Finally, Tom sort of shooed the crowd away and a welcome sigh of relief went up from the team. We expected some culture shock but this might have been a bit more than we bargained for.

We established our residence, a tent commune of sorts, complete with shower tent that we brought from home and a brand spankin' new latrine, thankfully complete with fencing after all which put us all just a bit more at ease.

We were eager to dive right into the work because we came to build a school . . . yeah, not exactly. When Tom was here early this year he had left specific instructions about what needed to be done before we arrived to make the best use of the team's time while they were here. Things like a roof over the new structure that would allow us to work even though it was raining, weeds pulled and possible gravel put down in the school rooms so as to allow us to mix and pour the cement for the floor. Guess several months just wasn't quite enough time to get to it.

The most notable disappointment was that there were no burned red bricks that would be necessary to build the school walls. Sure we could help make some bricks but it takes at least a week to make a brick from start to finish and so we knew right off the bat the bricks just weren't going to happen. I felt sort of sorry for Tom as you could sense his heart for this village and this school project and he simply could not hide his disappointment from this turn of events.

Most of the day was spent settling in, trying to figure out what it is exactly that we were going to be doing this week and well, just sort of playing some games with the children, shaking a ton of hands and kind of sitting around.

In the late afternoon Tom offered to take us on a tour of the village which we were all eager to embark on. We headed out sort of figuring that this would finally give the crowds of people a reason to disperse from the area. Yet another wrong RAD assumption.

As we began walking across the field to the road, we would be walking on, the crowd just joined right in with us except now they pushed closer and the children were the first to actually mingle amongst us.

It was a sweet deal. I saw the members of the team continuing to warm up to the people we would be spending the next week with sharing laughter about English words and how to say them in Sango. People were pointing and waving their hands, talking loudly (which I never quite figured out why just because a person doesn't speak your language, right away makes them hard of hearing, think about it next time you see someone trying to explain something to someone who doesn't speak their language). It was quite the sight to see.

As the hike progressed it was just like walking through a copy of National Geographic. The scenes were familiar and yet to be seeing them first hand and not on a piece of slick paper, photo touched to make the colors vibrant brought an awesome sense of reality to bear as we strolled.
Some of the scenes we saw, a couple I photographed but quite truthfully you feel kind of weird capturing a picture of another person's suffering, large families living in and around small homes. Native women with a child on one hip, pounding grain or stirring something in a pot over a small wood fire.

We saw children with no clothes, with only shirts on, or with clothes that people in the states would not even deem worthy to go into our rag bags for household cleaning. Everywhere you looked these were the scenes we saw.

And then if you looked closely you began to be able to see even more than what you caught as a first glance walking by. The thinness of people. Slender legs, slender torsos, slender faces, especially on the faces of the adults that we encountered, and yet with the passing of each home, a friendly wave and a smile to those who had come from such a long way away to hopefully be a blessing to their village.

If the adults were thin, the kids were just skinny, skinny all over the place. Black hair everywhere, in rows, puffs, shaved in spots, just really going about every direction you can imagine. Unless of course their hair was on one of the many shades of orange that we saw signaling a gross lack of nourishment and nutrition.

Unfortunately not all the children are skinny. Naked babies, naked children with bellies sticking straight out, swollen from hunger and me with a nice sterile wrapped granola bar in my fanny pack as I walked by. Quite frankly, I'm still in a quandary about how to exactly process all that I'm seeing and experiencing.

We returned back to our campsite close to dark, around 6:30, as that's what you get being this close to the equator, in time for dinner under battery operated lanterns. Sounds like fun doesn't it? Did I mention that lights in a village where there is no electricity is quite the attraction to all those around. The lights worked like a magnet for both people and bugs. We were eating dinner and while we couldn't really see the vast amount of people just outside of our view, we clearly knew they were there from the sound of shuffling, talking and whispering going on all around us. it was sort of a scary feeling. Even Tom native to this area spoke openly of his uneasiness about what was going on all around us. The feeling of people peering at your every move in a totally dark setting set our team on edge.

Finally Tom had had enough, he sprung to his feet and ventured into the darkness chasing people away from the white people show. Once this tension was removed we turned our attention to dinner, which did I mention the lights drew the bugs from far and wide? Buzzing is the word I would use to describe our dinner but it wasn't from conversation. I'm not sure how many bugs drowned in my beef stew stuff, but I was hungry enough, I just didn't look close at what I was eating. The night came to a close about 8:30 and everyone was glad to settle in their tents to get rested up for what we hoped was going to to be a productive day tomorrow.

Everyone was in, you could feel the lull of conversations and laughter coming to a close between our tents, sleep was just about to overtake us when the gun shot rang out. Yet another reminder that we weren't in Wooster any longer. The fragility of life was strong in my mind and a real understanding that we were in another country, another culture and what seemed like a total walk back in time was all around us. Tom spoke quickly to assure us that the man who fired the gun was here to stand guard over us while we slept and the gun shot was simply to let the others know that he was here.

The saddest part of the deal? It was a Muslim fella that had come to guard us because from what I could understand they were among some of the most dependable people in the village and the ones who could really be trusted.

That was our first day in the village of Pama.