Camp BE Afterthoughts

I got a little sad on the last day of camp and kind of had a short therapeutic writing session to let out some of my feelings.  What I wrote captured exactly how I was feeling at the moment and so I typed it up below to share my final thoughts on what myself and the boys had just experienced:

We have reached the final day of Camp BE and I must say, I am so elated that I was able to be a part of it.  These boys are so amazing!  You would never know from seeing them here that most of them are poor, like one meal a day poor; that they have drunken, abusive parents; that they are orphans; and that they carry the burden of being a child in a country that hardly allows them to have a childhood.  The kids are taking a post test now, and as I sit here watching them work so hard and seeing them smile from the satisfaction of what they have experienced over the past few days, I can't seem to fight off this sadness that has overcome me.  It's not so much the goodbye that breaks my heart, but more the fact that each one of these boys must walk out of these school doors and right back into their situations.

None of these boys have ever experienced anything like this in their lives and most of them may never again.  Some, I hope most, will take what they have learned and use it as a fuel to push toward greatness and move beyond their current situations.  That is the good I see in Camp BE.  However it does hurt that after getting a small taste of "good life" they must all go back to "bad" until they are old enough and independent enough to make the changes that I know they can make.  Now that they have come into this great experience and have been surrounded by all of this positive energy, I hate that tomorrow they will be right back in the presence of their degrading parents, a gender discriminatory society, and a world full of "no" and "you can't."  We have told them that they can and did our best to show them that they can.  Now all I can do is pray that that's enough and that they do!  Camp BE really changed my life; please God, let it change theirs.

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea

P.S.  During a closing speech, one of the boys said, "the seeds you have planted will never be uprooted or covered by bushes."  This was all the confirmation I needed.  We did, indeed, make a difference.