"How beautiful are the feet..."
Today we worked with an organization called Sole Hope! This was probably one of my favorite days on the trip. It is run by Drü and Asher Collie. Sole Hope focuses on foot related diseases and jiggers. They want to prevent and educate kids about them so that they can live a healthier life. Jiggers are tiny little sand fleas that will burrow themselves up inside of the child's foot and lay egg sacs. This will cause the children's feet to swell dramatically and make it very uncomfortable to walk. Sole Hope has been working with different villages and schools to remove the jiggers from the kids feet.
Our team along with the Sole Hope team drove out to a school called Kalunganmi. We first started out just dancing and playing with the kids in this huge beautiful open field. Moses now works with Sole Hope so it was really good to be able to spend some time with him again! He played music and danced with the kids before it was time to start the stations.
Our team along with the Sole Hope team drove out to a school called Kalunganmi. We first started out just dancing and playing with the kids in this huge beautiful open field. Moses now works with Sole Hope so it was really good to be able to spend some time with him again! He played music and danced with the kids before it was time to start the stations.
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All of the kids lined up and got a sheet of paper with their name and age along with a diagram of feet and hands. This was carried along with them as they went through the feet washing station. All of the children got their feet washed before being carried over to the next station to have their feet and hands checked for jiggers. The child would then hand the sheet of paper to what they called "notetakers." The notetakers would sketch the places on the diagram where the child had jiggers as the person in front of them dug them out of the children's feet. After all of the kids were de-jiggered, they would come over to the shoe fitting station. They would then be fitted for a new pair of Sole Hope shoes to take home with them. Lastly, they would go to the education station where they learned how to prevent jiggers.
No one dug the jiggers on our team, but we had a choice to either wash feet, carry kids, be a notetaker, or fit kids with new shoes. I worked at the shoe fitting station. I have never experienced so many emotions at one time during those few hours of fitting kids with new shoes. Here I am, an American, with about 20+ different pairs of shoes in my closet back home while these kids have only one and sometimes none causing them to catch these horrible diseases. It was a hard and emotional day but I absolutely LOVED IT. I would do it a million times over. When they came to my station, they would bring their paper with them so that I could record their shoe size and then hand it back to one of the people who work with Sole Hope.
No one dug the jiggers on our team, but we had a choice to either wash feet, carry kids, be a notetaker, or fit kids with new shoes. I worked at the shoe fitting station. I have never experienced so many emotions at one time during those few hours of fitting kids with new shoes. Here I am, an American, with about 20+ different pairs of shoes in my closet back home while these kids have only one and sometimes none causing them to catch these horrible diseases. It was a hard and emotional day but I absolutely LOVED IT. I would do it a million times over. When they came to my station, they would bring their paper with them so that I could record their shoe size and then hand it back to one of the people who work with Sole Hope.
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Two stories for you so that you can maybe get a picture of how awful these jiggers are. First is a little boy. He was one of the last ones to come through the line and get checked for jiggers. He had 23 between his hands and his feet. Surprisingly, this isn't an extremely high number for Sole Hope to see...but it was the most we had seen that day. As they were removing the jiggers from his feet he was screaming and crying. You could probably hear him from a mile away. There were four men holding him down as they dug these nasty egg sacs and bugs out of his feet and hands with safety pins.
There was another little girl who had jiggers in her feet, but she had bigger problems than just the jiggers. She had rats in her home. Doesn't sound like a huge deal right? Well they come out at night and eat her feet. Her feet were shredded because they would come and eat her feet at night and there is nothing she could do about it because she doesn't have any shoes to protect her feet. Breaks my heart into a million pieces.
Even though what we saw was hard, it was so beautiful in the end to see all of these children sitting around in a circle with clean feet and NEW SHOES!!
There was another little girl who had jiggers in her feet, but she had bigger problems than just the jiggers. She had rats in her home. Doesn't sound like a huge deal right? Well they come out at night and eat her feet. Her feet were shredded because they would come and eat her feet at night and there is nothing she could do about it because she doesn't have any shoes to protect her feet. Breaks my heart into a million pieces.
Even though what we saw was hard, it was so beautiful in the end to see all of these children sitting around in a circle with clean feet and NEW SHOES!!
We headed back to the Sole Hope house to take a tour before headed back to the guesthouse. Their house was really nice compared to anything else I had seen in Africa. I could definitely tell that Drü and Asher are the artsy type which I LOVE! We got to see where they make the shoes that they give to the children. We also got to see where they house the kids that have some of the worst cases of jiggers or diseases. There was a boys room and a girls room. Asher said that sometimes they will get kids who have more than 300 jiggers in their feet. Can you even imagine?? Last, we got to shop in their store before we left.
It was such a great day! I would love to work with Sole Hope more in the future. We went to eat at a Chinese restaurant after we finished. Who knew they had chinese food?!
It was such a great day! I would love to work with Sole Hope more in the future. We went to eat at a Chinese restaurant after we finished. Who knew they had chinese food?!
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If y'all are even in the SLIGHTEST interested in knowing more about this organization, I would love for you to check them out at http://solehope.org. I will be throwing a "shoe cutting party" for them sometime in the near future. You can buy the patterns online and then cut shoes from old jeans, safety pin them together, and send them off to their warehouse! The safety pins that you send will be what they use to take the jiggers out of the children's feet. It is definitely a cool organization and I loved getting to be the hands of feet of Jesus with them.
"Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them."
~John 13: 14-17~
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