It’s hard to believe that it’s both already and only the end of day 3. This afternoon as we were standing on the side of the road, snow capped mountains on the horizon, blue grey water sloshing around in the windy bay behind us, Eugene and I started to talking about our time at Skaramagas (the camp).
Eugene said that the days here were making him feel good but weren’t as thought provoking as sight seeing. My initial reaction was: “I’m having the opposite experience.” Although the days here are somewhat slow and the work not mentally challenging, I can almost feeling my brain whirring from thinking, from asking my self what I think about the situation in the camp, what’s working, what should change, what the future for these people holds, what they are like and so on and on. On the other hand, on at least the first two days, I wasn’t sure how ‘warm and fuzzy’ being at the camp was making me feel. I was enjoying being there, talking to the people, both volunteers and refugees, but I didn’t feel like I was making any particular connections with the people. Today though I played with some really sweet kids and I can still feel my heart glowing from the time I spent with the little girl who latched on to me in the shoe room and who played with me and hugged me with such excitement and delight for ages until her dad came to take her back to their place.
Thinking more about Eugene’s assessment I was intrigued by the differences in the learning experiences we were comparing. Being in the camp is a different type of thought provoking to sight seeing and museum visiting. While a museum is curated, providing overview, facts and direction, at the camp you have to pull both the questions and ‘answers’ out of the situation itself, with no assurances or information to simply fall back on. It’s a type of thought provoking that for me goes around in spirals, different observations taking me back to the same conclusions but not being sure what to do with them.