“Wow, how time flies, the integration period is over? Working outside of my comfort zone has been fascinating”. Over the past two months, I have been working with my community members to carry out integration activities to increase coordination with community members and facilitate Asset-Based Community Development. It has been a pleasure teaching at a primary school in my community, establishing household and communal vegetable gardens, planting trees, and training school adolescent girls in making low-cost reusable sanitary pads.
“I am going home”, the girl said asking for permission from my class partner at a primary school where I volunteer as a teacher. I asked my partner later why this was happening and she said that most of the adolescent girls leave classes when they start menstruating during class time because of fear of embarrassment as the period leaks and marks bloody stains on their clothes due to lack of sanitary pads. Hence we trained the girls in making sanitary pads. “Oooh, I never used a pad before”, one of the girls said with excitement after coming up with her reusable sanitary pad during the training we had on teaching the girls to sew their pads using locally available materials.
Being a rainy season, people were busy with their farm activities and it was difficult to carry out other integration activities like planting trees due to the unavailability of the community members. Our Group Village Head and my close friend from the community have always been there encouraging me that people will show up someday just be patient. Surprisingly, people showed up during the festive season, ready with manure and hoes; then we planted the trees together as a community.
Honestly, this is the work I needed to build and strengthen my capacity for contributing to the development of my nation and Africa at large as Napoleon Hill once pointed out “It is true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed“. I have now faced the true definition of volunteering; it is not all about helping to transform underserved communities but transforming your career life as well for the better. Working together with my community members has strengthened my team spirit by teaching me patience, networking, and listening skills. “Use back stitch, don’t bother with tying the sewing thread, the pad won’t be neat”, a community friend told me during the pad-making training. This surprised me but also taught me that I don’t know it all rather there is more I have to learn from the community members.
After four months I was also very happy to travel from Dedza and meet my fellow Volunteers in Dowa district for In-Service Training 1. Interestingly, we all got healed from our pains by sharing our community experiences and ways of coping. Going back to my community, I was welcomed with extreme joy as if I were now a Chewa citizen who had been in exile for years.
