I thought orientation would be so awkward...and it was for the first couple hours, but turned into one of the most amazing weeks of my life. I'll walk through day by day in terms of memories.
Tuesday, August 2nd I arrived in Boston where Jess had told me she'd pick me up. We got in touch and I found her and her car. We then drove into Boston where we picked up Jimmy and eventually found Will. All great people which is lucky seeing I'll be living and working with them for the next year! Jess is from northern Mass and went to Quinnipiac. Jimmy went to Harvard and is from Oakland (knows John Chen!). Will is from outside Phili and went to UofRochester. Yes, this is about the amount of information I would be able to give after the first day.
Jess drove us up to her house outside of Hanover, NH where we stayed the night and watched a lot of Shark Week. It was the perfect way to prepare for a year on the coast of South Africa! Every other story was about Great Whites and based in South Africa. Woke up the next morning and Amanda Bilas, another intern, met us at the house to help carry our luggage up to Pierce's Inn. Everyone eventually filed in to the Inn and there were countless awkward meet-and-greets receiving no more information than that which you could find in a Facebook profile. This didn't take up too much time however because we had to get to the cabin for the next two days.
Everyone piled into the cars. The car I was in was the last to leave and with another in front of us we decided to follow them. Problem was, the car in front of us didn't have anyone in front of them so we got lost. Asked for directions twice and eventually made it.
At the head of the trail we parked our cars and hiked in carrying food, water, sleeping bags, etc. 20 minute or less walk. The cabin was this huge beautiful place with an outhouse (guarded by GIANT spiders), no showers, spring water, and lofts for sleeping. Dartmouth students built it, along with 14 others throughout the woods, and students can rent it out for $10/night. Nice. Some of the guys who are interns have been there before.
THURSDAY!!!!
Thursday we woke up earlier because some Malawian coaches were coming to hang out with us and go for a hike up Moose Mountain. One of the coaches, Cathy, really liked me because my name is close to a Malawian one I guess - Márita. Godfrey, aka God, led some games, like find the ball, and we got to know each other a bit. All the games we played had some HIV-based theme. Find the Ball has people passing a ball behind their backs in two teams. One team then gets to guess who from the opposing team is holding the ball. The ball is labeled with an "HIV" and it teaches kids that you can't tell who has HIV by looking at them. We then hiked up moose mountain. 2,222 feet later we were at the top, took a picture, and heard Gift's coaching story. Also, Chinese Kilo. FANTASTIC! At the end you fold you hands, bow your head, and mutter "chinese". No one knew whether to laugh or be offended.
Back down for lunch we made sandwiches and played "counting", a general card game the Malawians taught us. SOOO FUN. (ace, 2, 8, Jack are special and the rest is like uno with suit and number. Ace = choose suit, 2=draw 2, 8=match it for the reverse, Jack =jump). The afternoon was filled with activities like skits of intern "Be"s, kilo competition, and the leadership compass. We also got to play a lot of the games that the kids play to learn about HIV. Waiting for dinner we were all dead. Everyone just sat around the campfire pit (not to be used) and talked about movies and tv shows that we liked. Boys did some water drumming in the tiny pond. Hilarious.
The whole cabin was decorated downstairs. There were streamers and the tables were made into smaller café-style tables with crayons, paper, candy, and pipe-cleaners to play with. I had fun melting crayons and painting with them and burning pipe-cleaners. The first round was the question "who do you respect and what would you say to them?" Other questions were about mistakes/regrets we had made (me not paying attention to my fitness before senior year - had to share with almost-strangers - weird). There were others too that I can't remember. Cool activity though. By the end of this night everyone is getting in a good groove and we interns are really forming a strong bond. It was so cool to see and be a part of.
FRIDAY!!!!
We got up early and went back to Pierce's. This is where orientation as a part of GRS really started. We spent all day watching presentations and looking at power points. The best part of this day came at night. GRS was having their board meeting and the Malawians were in town so we had this big cookout and networking party. Spoke with a lot of different people (millionaires and office workers). It was a lot of fun. Mary and Cathy asked me about my last name because in Malawi COE means Center Of Excellence. YES! I sat with Hasmin, Amanda, Gift, and God for dinner. We had a good time. Gifty has the best laugh, it sounds like an evil toddler! We left dinner a little early and Gift, Amanda, Chisso, and I went outside and were listening to African music on Gift's phone and they were teaching us dance moves. Fun fun.
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| Thanks for the photo Jess! |
After dinner we were supposed to have a policy and procedures meeting. Tommy, the CEO, got up in front of everyone and started talking about weird rules, like don't share towels so bacteria doesn't kill us all, and other stuff. Then music cuts in and Karty comes through as a MJ reincarnation and then every ex-intern that was there started Thriller-ing all over the place. We then got to witness a couple musical numbers, remixed to pertain to us of course. Thriller => interns etc. Funny. When this was done we were told we had to try and finish the beer from the night. We all started drinking more and moved outside to the bon fire someone had built.
Ale got a guitar and started playing and singing - it was so good. At around 11:30 Cindy, the owner, came out and we talked her into doing a little stand-up for us. It's not really stand up though. She had written a book called "Finding the Doorbell" about having a sexual life after 40 or something. So she just sat down and started talking about her first orgasm, and her sex life in college and through her adult life and porn...everything really. It was crazy. Bryan was on the Dartmouth team and told me that they would stay at the cabin for their end of the year banquet. They would make lists of questions to ask Cindy about sex. It was outrageous. Everyone was dying because on top of the explicit content, this woman is crazy funny.
SATURDAY!!!!
Last day of orientation. More power points. We learned about the RTC that grassroot is running this year to learn if sport based behavior change works. It's really exciting and I hope I get to be a part of it. We played Juggle my life which was my favorite game. Everyone is just throwing tennis balls everywhere. It teaches that adding sex to everything else you are juggling makes it harder and adds unwanted and unexpected consequences. We also learned how to pitch GRS and field a variety of questions which was cool. I ran up the hill in the back with Trevor and Cristina because I was going crazy sitting all day and then we played around for a while which morphed into HEAD MY PUNT! Which is basically a person punting a ball and yelling "head my punt" and everyone else running around trying to get there in time to head it. Hilarious. We were doing Q&A at this point and would switch between punt and question.
Other great moment of the day: we had talked about inter-generation dating as a cause of the HIV epidemic and how guys like girls who are "young and sweet" as they say in Africa. Will tried to say this in a session, but came up with "sweet and tasty" instead so everyone calls Will "Sweet and Tasty", or S-n-T for short.
When we finished with everything we went outside and played a pick-up tournament that we named "The Mushroom Cup" because Trevor had found a GIANT mushroom cap somewhere. I got one goal and Cristina won the MVP. Some of the guys were taking off their shirts and were sooo sweaty. I was disgusting. Ale was making fun of me once so I playfully pushed his back and my hand was just wet. Gross.
Inside for dinner I sat at a table with Taylor, Ben, Bryan, Trevor, and someone else. Fun times hearing stories from Taylor…car surfing in Zambia and stuff. Karty came and sat with us later and told us a story of him camping in Botswana and waking up to lion tracks all around his tent- scary.
All the ex-interns came in after dinner and we hung out and talked about their experiences and things we should see and do. All good information and their excitement really got me jazzed to leave.
We spent the rest of the night hanging out in the living room and watching youtube videos on the projector. Dining dogs, watermelon baby, human bicycle, etc.
SUNDAY!!!
We left at 4:30 am. Blah. Made it to Boston and on to DC. Sat in the airport for 5 hours. Ate some lunch and read and walked around….got on the plane, but the weather over the Atlantic was bad so we sat there for 2 hrs. Eventually took off. I got to watch Just Go With It which was hilarious. Then Rio, then FALTU. Good day. We then landed in Senegal and switched some people up. I had two seats to myself though and met some nice people who I was able to pitch to and were really interest in GRS. The woman sitting across the aisle from me works for the University of Tennessee and was visiting her friend in Zimbabwe who works in epidemiology doing more in PMTCT, but HIV work none-the-less. Great to meet and talk with her.
The second leg I slept a lot. I watched Water for Elephants and part of Kung Fu Panda 2. Also, we flew over the Ivory Coast. Exciting. Landed in Joburg, but because of the initial delay we had missed our plane. The airline rebooked us for the morning flight and put us up in a hotel for the night with food coupons. I had my own little room. It was so cute. And NICE to sleep in a bed.
The restaurant we had vouchers to was this little Greek place inside the hotel. It was actually 4 hotels within a huge complex. Anyways, the restaurant was inside, but in this area made to look like an outdoor European city. The streets were cobblestone and the walls were facades of houses with restaurants underneath. The ceiling was even painted blue with clouds and there was a big fountain in a square with a giant David in it dressed like a South African rugby player. Good food.
Woke up at 3:30 (BLAH) and went back to the airport and got on a plane to Port Elizabeth. Pumeza and her husband picked us up and brought us to our house. It's nice and big and I can see the ocean from my room. Initially, just Jess and I were home because we had to do two trips. So it's just us two girls in the house and someone knocks on the door. I look out the window and have no idea who it is, he's just in a track suit. I ask who it is and he says, "Open the door". I asked again who he was and it went on like this for a while, he would just say things like "if someone knocks you should open the door" It was so weird. It turned out he was our site director and had come to meet us. When Pumeza got back we let him in and laughed about it, he went back and forth on if we were cautious or rude. Oops.
Slept great the first night and we have been hanging out, cooking meals together, and picking up household items. First day at the office is tomorrow!
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