Carepoint Close Up!

I spend most of my day at a Carepoint, so I might as well give you all an indepth understanding of the whole reason I’m in Eswatini!

There are 12 Carepoints in Nsoko (the city I’m in) and we visit 3 of them. There are 2 regional leaders who are each over 6 Carepoints. Then there are 3 coordinators for each region. And finally, there is a shepard stationed over each Carepoint, and the shepard is basically the person who’s in charge of how we do ministry each day!

My Carepoint is called Joyela, and it’s about 10 minutes from the base we stay at (and our base is like a mixture of Training Camp and Guatemala). Every morning, we watch the other teams drive off to their Carepoints, then wait a half hour for our bus to come back and bring us to our Carepoint!

When we get there, we walk past the little playground surrounded by a short fence of tire halves, into the building we keep all of our stuff inside. This building is big, but not huge, and there are probably a hundred chairs stacked on either side of the door.

One of us will lead a devotional just for us and our shepard to set our hearts in the right place before ministry. Then we’ll discuss our plan for the day, and whether we’re going to do a house visit before most of the kids come.

If we don’t do a house visit, then we hang around and chat with ourselves or the shepard, help the cooks prepare the manna packets (nutritional meals of rice, soy, and vegetables) for later in the day, play with the few kids who show up early, or prepare for the dance and short lesson we’ll present shortly before we leave.

Lunch will be spent separate from the kids (so they don’t get jealous of our different food), and conversation will range from silly to… still silly. The 11 of us are Kait, Jackson, Cimmie, Clara, Sophie, Jess, Hannah, Abi, Kennedy, Lily, and me, and we have multiple people in this group who turn everything into a party.

After lunch, which we finish by 1:30, is when kids usually start to come, and we do whatever the kids want to do with us (within reason of course). This could look like letting them sleep on us, carrying them around all day, playing tag, kicking a ball, or just talking with them!

The kids usually go to people for different things, and I guess I’ve been designated as the person who will hold you as you do the monkey bars, catch you when you take a flying leap off the slide, carry you on the tires, spin you until I’m dizzy, and hold you upside down before lifting you to the sky. It’s exhausting, but I love hearing the kids laugh!

We leave at 4:00 most days (Fridays we get picked up an hour early), and the kids always crowd around us to give us a million hugs goodbye. They continue waving as the bus drives away, and we’re left talking about the crazy but fulfilling day we’ve had!