1.07.2009

This really happened. Like, for real.

I just got back from a leadership camp I planned and ran for the student leaders at my primary school and a primary school in my area. Thanks to the incredible help of my principal, his friend (who is the principal of the other school) and Megan it was a success.

Not only did some of the kids at the camp swim in a pool for the first time (sheer, wet chaos) and have their own can of pop for the first time (lots of initial issues with opening, but then the natural progression to mixing coke and sprite to look like whiskey) but we also had... well... some incidents...

Let me just tell you about today, the second day in our two day camp. It started early and noisy. The kids woke up at about 5:15 and began romping as only unattended kids can romp. Then, later I ran some workshops on listening skills and self love that went really well. All was peaceful and happy. It was going great. Kids were listening to each other. They were showing off their "me" collages. I was feeling like we were almost done and everything had gone well.

Then, our guests arrived. They were two members of the South African Police Service form our area. They were on time and prepared. Ready to do a speech and question and answer time with our students about the drugs in our community. We decided to hold this session because there have been a wave of kids at our school who are huffing glue. I introduced them, got the kids ready to listen and then went to sit in the back of the room. I must admit I didn't understand most of what was being said because they were speaking in Setswana and my limited vocabulary doesn't include a lot of drug terms.

All of the sudden, the police officer started dropping baggies in front of all of the kids. He told them in Setswana "I'm giving you sweets" (of course my vocabulary includes "sweets"). I looked at what he was passing out and realized it was bags of weed. I'm not kidding. The police gave my kids weed. I thought, "no, way. that's got to be dried grass or something." but then I took a whif of the bag that dropped on our table and it smelled a whole lot like weed. I asked my principal if it was really "daga" (what they call marijuana here- pronounced "da ha") and he told me it was. Now I have all these pictures of my students holding little baggies of weed. I cannot even begin to describe how surreal it was.

Megan and I had to excuse ourselves to have a 30 second freak-out behind the building and then we came back in. The kids were still holding, sniffing, and looking at the bags of weed. The weirdest thing was, no one else seemed to think this was strange. Apparently, police giving small children weed is not cause for humor or alarm from my colleagues. I told my principal that Megan and I thought it was pretty strange and funny that the police were handing out daga and he just smiled and told me it was important for the kids to know what the "real thing" looks like.

In the end, the police collected all the baggies, reminded the kids to stay away from drugs and left. I must admit that the kids seemed to really enjoy the speech and learn a lot. I've had a lot of moments where I thought, "this would NEVER happen in the US" but I think cops giving weed to children (even if it was temporarily) may top them all.

Then, as if my day hadn't been strange enough, Megan and I were walking toward our bus when I noticed my principal helping the driver back up. I was struck by how badly the driver was driving when I realized the person driving our bus was not the bus driver at all but actually the principal from the other school! I asked why he was driving and he informed me that our bus driver had hitchhiked back to town and the owner of the bus had told him they would have to drive the bus themselves. So there he was, having never driven a bus before, driving all of our kids down the dirt roads back to the village. It's important to note that both of these principals are WONDERFUL and unceasingly positive, so they just laughed, loaded the kids and took off down the road.

Some things can really only happen in Africa...

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