What Has Been Done With My Wife

With Cross Cultural Solutions, you don’t really have a choice as to where you volunteer. Certainly, they take into account your preferences and skills and, in our case, they had to take into account what would be appropriate for the kids. In any event, as we previously posted, Melissa and Maya ended up being placed at Kigongoni pre-school. Melissa’s already gone into detail about the placement, so I won’t bother repeating. However, this past Wednesday, I went with her and Emma to the school just to get a sense of what she’s been doing the past four weeks.

Suffice it to say that I learned that Melissa was so firmly thrown out of her comfort zone, that it was kind of funny. A brief recap on Melissa: She’s a neat freak, she’s impatient, she’s driven, she cannot stand repetition, she prizes efficiency over almost all else and, let’s be frank, Melissa would not normally choose to surround herself with 50 pre-school kids, even under the best of circumstances.

So, I was truly amazed to see the transformation of my wife. We arrived and all of the kids ran to her like she was Mary Poppins. They fought to grab her hands and just to touch her in some way. Melissa, as is typically the case, arrived before the teacher got there. Yet, there were already 15 to 20 kids running all around the “facility.” After an initial group meeting, which is really the only time that the actual teacher does anything, Melissa takes kids in groups of 10. With each group of kids, she leads them in such classic activities as singing Who Has Come to School Today; Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes; Mister Clown; the Hokey Pokey and then playing Chui, Chui, Simba (Cheetah, Cheetah, Lion which is Tanzanian Duck, Duck, Goose) and Red Light, Green Light. Even more remarkable, after the singing and the games, Melissa had an art project prepared for the kids. To put this in context, I think I can safely say that in the 13+ years that we have had kids, Melissa has not done one single art project with our kids. As a side note, the art project was to create Valentine’s Day cards. Yes, they celebrate Valentine’s Day in Tanzania. Odd. But if this was not enough, Melissa had to repeat this set of activities four times. After the first two times, I wanted to blow my brains out. Yet, Melissa was the picture of patience and equanimity. I can only conclude that someone has kidnapped my wife.

I became certain of her abduction, when she proceeded to take pictures of all of the kids and spent hours assembling the pictures, stickers, pencils, notebooks, etc. as a going away gift for the kids.

A whole new softer side of Melissa. Of course, this only serves to further highlight my own deficiencies in this regard. Oh, well.

PS: We just returned from a small party, where we were the guests of honor. Really, it was Melissa. As Melissa mentioned in one of her postings, two local boys assisted her and Maya at her placement. She became great friends with the boys, who adore her, and with their mothers. At this party, they went around the room and each person told us (Maya and Emma were with us), what a great family we were and how glad they were that we had come to Tanzania. It felt a little bit like the IKAR board “surprise” party. I credit my wife for bringing such warmth and love into everything she does.