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| My boss Gemma and some of the students |
I
don’t know how it happened, but volunteerism has become part of the fabric of
my character. I jones to serve the way a
runner needs exercise and a retired teacher still needs to teach! Coming back to Tanzania required that I set
up a home and make money to care for Happy and me. So accepting the job at Safaris-R-Us was a
lifeline in this crazy storm of adoption and I’m grateful for it. Still as elated as I was, and still am, to
live and work here, the void of volunteering has created a sadness in me that I
could not have anticipated. I feel
useless in a country screaming out for my talents and energy. I’m a wasted vessel. I hate it.
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| K and his student |
Well,
I hated it until last week. You see, I
forgot about the promises that my job in my little safari company was
delivering on someone else’s dream! You
have read my type (as opposed to “hear me say” – get it? Yes, I’m lame!) about how our company donates
a monetary portion of each safari to The School of St. Jude? Well, our company is in its infancy. It isn’t even yet one year old. And yet, our little 6 member team somehow managed
to secure enough clients for us to donate over 12,000 USD to the school. 12
thousand dollars people! That’s a lot of
money. And it got me to thinking…
Some
of the teachers at the school were once sponsored children themselves. Someone from an organization established out
of America or Europe decided to take a chance on these kids—now adults—and make
sure that they got a good foundational education and sent them to teachers
college. And now these students are the
adult teachers working at The School of St. Jude. I realized what an incredible gamble was
made by educating these individuals because there was no guarantee of a job
after college. And all the efforts of
providing them a better life would go unfulfilled. And I think I lost sight of
that.
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| Assembly time |
Every
time I land a client, book a safari, and get money deposited into our company’s
account, I am fulfilling another dream.
While its true that The School of St. Jude gets their sponsors from all
over the world, when the global economy went into crisis a few years back, so
did the school. Almost 50 positions were
eliminated from the school in effort to keep it afloat. And while it has been a few years since that
happened and the economy and sponsorship is growing again, not all the
positions have been rehired and many of those workers never ever found
jobs. I don't know what situations that had to go back to. Dreams unfulfilled. And I somehow forgot
that.
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| the home of a student from St. Jude |
While
its true that I no longer have “my hands in the trenches”, my work in the
safari company is so very needed. We
have a busy schedule ahead for the new safari season and it would be great if
we could DOUBLE the donation amount for 2012, thus allowing outside sponsors to
cover the students, as we slowly cover the cost of the Tanzanian teachers and
staff.
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| The inside of a boarding room at St. Jude |
I
may be behind the scenes, but I am coming to realize that I am as much a part
of the volunteer “machine” as anyone on the front lines. My efforts sustain the life of a teacher or
staff member, who provides a new life for a current student, who will then go
on and build a business and a future for his/her own family, and truly create a
new Tanzania. St. Jude’s motto is “fighting
poverty through education”. And I am so
proud to say that I am a part of that fight.
2011=
$12,000. I think I can do better than
that for 2012!
*all pictures courtesy of Gemma Sisia
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1 comment:
What a great story! God always has a way to help us fulfill the desires of our hearts (when they align within his will of course ;)). I'm so glad that your company is successful financially and can be so generous to those who really really need it! Its wonderful to work for an employer who's vision is so close to your own!
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