Sunday, September 26, 2010

Walk the Walll


This past Friday, we joined with our foreign friends and local volunteers in Hengyang on a walk across the city to raise money for orphaned and disabled children in China. We were told to be at the starting point at 7:00 a.m. My team-mate and I, having remembered waiting around the previous year, decided we'd go a little later. Good thing too since the walk did not start until about 8:45. (See people standing around). 

About 2 of us were assigned to each child. We were to encourage them, give them water, and be attuned to if they needed to rest for a bit. I was matched with an 11 or 12 year old girls (let's call her Raven) that has a lot of energy but is not able to talk. 

She was really excited at the beginning of the walk and kept trying to let go of my hand in order to hold everyone else's hand. "She's really obedient," the carers all reassured me in Chinese. But she made me a little nervous because it felt like she was trying to "escape." After about one and a half hours of being the sole person responsible for Raven(the other partner left me,) I recruited some help and was able to walk freely and take a few photos of the walk.
A few moments before I took this photo (above), the man and the lady in the tights get-up behind him were both snapping photos of us foreigners. I was starting to get annoyed so I pulled out my camera and returned the favor. The lady was embarrassed, the man ate it up as you can see.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You needed all of the energy that you could muster.