CAMP: " I WANT TO SEE JESUS"

On Tuesday, all the boys came back to school from their holiday and we started a week long camp for all of the students at the school. It's nice for the kids to get back in the groove of school and being around their school friends after their month long holiday. One thing that we have noticed since they came back, though, is that they are acting differently than before they left. Some of the boys have been a lot more mean to the other kids and there seems to be more bullying going on than before. We don't quite understand why they are acting this way, but after a few days we think it may be because they need to re-establish their "dominance" among the other children. Some of the boys that we have really liked and have always been the good kids in school have really been rude to us and this has been extremely disappointing and discouraging.

Another change that we are dealing with right now is the cultural differences. This has always been a hard thing to deal with but it has been more prevalent during this camp. Most of the misunderstandings have not involved us directly but more among the other volunteers and staff. What we have realized is that there is just a huge miscommunication among people due to the lines of communication being so drastically difference. Misunderstandings between all of us have taken place because of the way things are being said, in one culture this is completely accepted and normal, while in another it can be extremely rude and disrespectful. We have found ourselves really frustrated with certain things here that are different for us, but then we notice even the nicest people here find those frustrating habits a normal and acceptable way of life. It can be hard sometimes for us to distinguish what is rude and what is just a cultural norm here.

Recently we have been able to learn from these misunderstandings and are starting to realize that nothing can be assumed here, because when we assume we get angry about things that the other "side" may never even recognize. We (Pat and I) were walking yesterday (our favorite thing to do here) and just talked about these things and frustrations that we can have here sometimes. We realized that this is something we need to learn to have patience in. We knew that coming here things would be different, we just didn't know how so. We want to learn how to not allow ourselves to become frustrated with things we don't understand because that would be a never ending cycle. We know that there will also be people in our lives in the future that we come across and have personality and/or cultural differences to us, but we need to have a bigger perspective about the world and that when people grow up in different environments (which is everyone) then you are bound to have disagreements.

We also have decided that we don't want to use the word "weird" anymore when someone describes a norm in their own culture. When we first got here we would say that a lot of things were weird. We are surrounded by 6 other cultures (mainly) here and have come to understand that nothing is weird but just different. One thing isn't better than the other, just different. Being here, everyone thinks in their own country they have the best way of living, eating, being governed, etc, but really...to each their own. I grew up thinking one food was the best and Pat grew up thinking another was the best, and from country to country these differences change even more. It's been an experience being exposed to all of these differences, and if there is something we don't fathom...T.I.A.