May 12, 2012

Another rainy morning and not exactly what I wanted when getting ready to visit the Access program summer camp. I wore my dress boots to deal with the rain and the mud and waited for Corrie in front of the market. It took a while to locate the right mini-van going to Varzob and then for it to get filled with the required number of passengers. It only cost 3 somoni for the ride and I had no trouble locating the exact place where to get off. The students were in the middle of practicing line dancing with Deborah and Reese leading the crowd. Subsequently, Reese played the guitar and sang several songs and I was dismayed to hear him lead the students in the singing of a Christian song called “10,000 Reasons”, which they had obviously learned before as they had the lyrics written down in their notebooks. I had noted that Deborah had said something to Tahmina on Thursday about doing God’s work. It sounded to me like pure proselytizing and we are prohibited from doing exactly that in our line of work.

We had a coffee break and then Corrie and I took over doing a variety of speaking and grammar games until lunch time came around. The students were very enthusiastic and had never done any of the activities we had prepared for them. I even learned to play the game “Uno”, which I had never had a chance to play before. Lunch was a mixed bag: Greek salad, quite good, vermicelli soup, just all right, and then white rice with a concoction made with ground beef and covered with crouton which was then fried and served with no sauce of any kind. I left it untouched.

The students played a couple of games before being shown a collage of the pictures taken during the camp. The background music? One of them was again “10,000 Reasons”, and some of the students hummed along with it. We said goodbye after visiting one of the cabins to see what they looked like inside. There were two story structures simulating a Swiss chalet and accommodated the mothers, who had acted as chaperones for the group, on the first floor and four girls on the second. They were in pretty good shape and the bathrooms were spotless, with flushing mechanisms and toilet paper.

                                              My gorgeous bouquet

I purchased a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers some children were selling by the side of the road while waiting for our mini-van to come by. I made it home just as the sun was coming out and enjoyed a peaceful evening at home watching TV, emailing people regarding the upcoming camps and finally getting some much deserved rest.