Ann-Marie and I were commissioned to start designing some of the advocacy materials for the albino project that ADRA Tanzania will be starting on December 1 (which we had thought we'd start on November 1 until we realized we didn't have a Project Coodinator yet, a position that is vital to any project). Ann-Marie didn't come here to figure out effective ways to distribute membership cards, design posters or brochures, or write plays, speeches or stories. She came here to shoot a video. Free of charge. About the albinos, an area we are very much interested in these days since we will soon have three projects involving albinos in Tanzania and are trying to start an Albino Program. But the videography didn't work out and so Ann-Marie willingly and uncomplainingly jumped in to help me work on the albino advocacy campaign. I am forever indebted to her for the help she's given me during the week and a half she's been staying with us.
Ann-Maire wholeheartedly embraced this project. She researched during the Friday I was gone on safari and found the most amazing website: positiveexposure.org. On Monday she showed me the site and we were both very excited about the possibilities it inspired in us. We told Max about our idea for a poster: have some of the albino students at Mukidoma, a nearby Adventist boarding school, come to our campus for a couple hours and play with some of the babies and toddlers at Cradle of Love. We wanted to try to get some shots of the babies loving and accepting the albino youth, pictures that would inspire and teach the public just like the Positive Exposure pictures had inspired and taught us. Max was fine with the idea, and Ann-Maire mentioned our plan to Rachel, a Project Coordinator for an ongoing albino project, when she accompanied Rachel and some of Mukidoma's albino students into Arusha for an eye-screening and to get glasses later in the week. Rachel, her husband, Yona, and Lazaro, a teacher at Mukidoma, worked together to come up with a new plan: have all the albino students from Mukidoma come to our campus on Sabbath afternoon and put on a big presentation. Ann-Marie and I, when told the idea on Friday morning, thought it would be fine, so long as we were able to take a few of the students to the baby home at some point during the afternoon for some photoshoot time. Throughout the day we kept hearing different plans and ideas and by the time work was done we were a bit confused about who was in charge of the whole event and kind of got a sneaking suspicion we would be presiding over Saturday's events. We also had been told that we would be performing the play that Ann-Marie had just finished writing that afternoon. So, just in case, we made sure to photocopy six copies of the play and then begged the Cradle of Love volunteers to help us. We assigned parts and practiced the play several times on Friday night, with tons of laughter in between due to Kezia's amazing acting skills (she, a white Danish girl interested in studying medicine, can pull off an angry Tanzanian black man in a remarkably convincing fashion!).
On Sabbath we went to church and came back to find that half of the albino students had already been transported to our campus to eat lunch here. ADRA drivers were leaving our gate to pick up the rest as we drove up. We were told it would take about an hour for the children to finish eating so Ann-Marie and I hurried to make some lunch for ourselves and try to figure out exactly what we would do if we were called upon to lead out in the event. When we made our way to the conference centre the students were still eating lunch so we talked to Yona and Lazaro and eventually figured out what the plan was for the afternoon. We felt a lot less nervous about the whole thing once we understood that Lazaro and his students would be responsible for the majority of the presentation and we let the CoL volunteers know that we probably wouldn't be requiring their tremendous acting skills after all. The program Lazaro prepared was great. The primary school students sang three songs, the secondary students sang three songs, and the teachers and matrons put on two dramas (Ann-Marie and I were very impressed with the dramas and decided we should put Lazaro in charge of designing the whole albino advocacy campaign for the project). Between some of the songs and dramas Max told the students about our new project and some of the secondary students stood up and said what they hoped they could teach others about what it's like to live with albinism. And then we had 45 minutes left. Ann-Marie and I had hoped for a bit longer to take pictures, but we thought we could probably still make do and get some pictures. And that's when things fell apart. To make this very long story a bit shorter, all 40 albino students, plus all the teachers and matrons rushed over to the baby home, poured through the playroom door and packed the room. Students grabbed babies from the mats, from the baby swings, even from the arms of the volunteers and visitors who were surprised at the sudden stampede. I had been at the back of the surging crowd and had no idea how to calm the sudden mayhem of babies screaming and toddlers crying. I ventured into the playroom, wondering if there was some way I could maybe manage to snap a few close-ups, but as soon as I stepped inside the playroom I knew there was no way any pictures I took could be used for our advocacy posters. Unless we would change the slogan to 'Albinos make me cry' - definitely not the message we want to get across to the public! I pushed the ADRA camera, which had been hanging around my neck and shoulder, to my back, hauled a terrified Jacob to my hip and scrambled back out the door to safety. Finally the students started filing back out of the playroom and wandering back to the cars for their ride back to Mukidoma. I watched them go, wondering what exactly had gone wrong and mourning the loss of the Positive Exposure-esque photos for our advocacy posters.
I stayed in the playroom, comforting and playing with babies, for the rest of the afternoon and evening until the little babies were all in bed and the toddlers were eating there pre-bedtime snack. I was still sad about how things had turned out when I left the baby home.
5 comments:
what a good idea for a poster.
maybe you will want to try it again with fewer students on campus.
never give up.
I may have missed this somewhere, but were the children warned that a large group was going to be coming to play with them? It sounds like the "stampede" and being grabbed by all these strange people at once would be enough to scare anyone . . . The albino visitors should have also greeted the children and asked if they could play with them. I don't know . . . from your description, it sounds like it was just chaos. But since I wasn't there, I probably can't really suggest anything helpful.
I think I will try again, but a little later. Since our start date is pushed back by a month, now we don't actually need to begin working on the advocacy campaign materials until the new year.
We told some of the volunteers that we'd be bringing between 8-10 students by to play with the kids...but we had no idea all 40 would be trooping over. The whole thing was just crazy and hopefully that situation never happens again. But I guess that kind of thing just happens when something you plan gets taken over by other people and you're left out of the loop on the new plans, haha. Oh well, we all survived and are now wiser for the future.
Good to know. Yeah, it sounded like a really good idea. I don't think you should give it up altogether. :)
Christen, NO. We at the baby home were only expecting 8-10 Albino children... NOT the stampede. This was poor decision making on the part of the ADRA director and a lack of listening to Alison's previous arrangements. The babies were terrified and poor Alison was unable to get that perfect picture that we had all planned to help her get. But we were able to get the babies calmed down. I'm glad that Alison and Ann-Marie were able to stay afterwards and help. They rocked!
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