Availability

Upon my arrival to the orphanage it was clear that some of the staff/people in charge already had some projects in place. At that time a staff member named Lucy was heading up the preparations for the following week's VBS style teachings at a nearby elementary school. There couldn't have been a better project to greet me. Still jet-lagged and not all too sure how this orphanage thing worked, I was confident in my abilities to lead a bunch of kids in a Vacation Bible School. Lucy and others showed us the skits they had been practicing and they were cute. I was really eager to do what I could to help with the next week's activities. There were others flying in from the States to help as well. These visitors had been to First Love Kenya many times and most even sponsored a child or two. One of the visitors named Jake just graduated from college in December. I was excited to interact with another college-aged person.



After watching the skits I decided to ask Lucy if I could play a part. I knew to be gentle. After interacting with Lucy for only a day I could tell she was very much type A. All of next week was very well planned out. I didn't want to step on any toes. So I said in my most submissive tone "If you'd like I can maybe play a character...or something?". Immediately there was silence that told of Lucy's lack of enthusiasm to include me in that way. So I quickly added "...or I can do something else". Lucy hesitantly said "Yeah...um...we'll see. It's just that we have been prepping this for weeks and...we'll see".



Drats. Toes stepped on.



To wrap up this uncomfortable encounter I said something like I just want to help in any way that I can, any way that you can use me.



This experience reminded me of a research social work concept. In research I learned that the objective is to add new information to the discussion, the conversation. And this makes sense. How redundant it would be to research an area on which there is already much conclusive information. To avoid this error one must first thoroughly research the topic to find the gaps in the research, to find where they can fit it. This is what I tried and apparently failed at doing with Lucy. I thought I did a fair job of feeling out the situation and choosing an appropriate tone with which to speak. But it appears that I could have done better. I detected that she had developed a large amount of this VBS conversation but I thought there could at least be a small gap that I could fill. With time this gap was to be revealed.

Regardless of the toe-stepping I am glad that I showed Lucy how willing I am to be apart of the First Love Ministry.