"Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you." - Dr. Seuss

The last few days of my time in Arad have been some of the most unbelievable in my life. Let me tell you why this is anything but hyperbole:

At the beginning of the week, I returned to Home Center (they now know me by name there… they call me “American”) to buy colored paints, brushes and, as we would later learn, extremely awful-smelling yet necessary paint remover. Many thanks to Bubbie and Oggy for their generosity in donating these materials to the gan; we completely revamped the outside walls! When we arrived in Arad, and started volunteering at the gan, these walls looked like they were about to collapse and would have been better built out of Legos and Elmer’s glue. Well, seven weeks, three buckets of spackle, fifteen liters of white paint, four cans of colored paints, six paint rollers and three sets of brushes later, the gan looks like a new place. I smell like paint thinner and I’m pretty sure I’ve had paint in my hair for at least two consecutive days, but I can honestly say that I don’t care. There is an incredible sense of accomplishment when such projects are seen through; accomplishment, and now, somewhat of an emptiness. We worked for seemingly endless weeks and hours, doing everything we possibly could to make the gan a more beautiful place, and now that our work (and our time here) is done, I’m not sure what I’m going to do on Sunday when I don’t get up and run across town to play with the kiddies and sweep dust piles away from drying paint. Actually, that’s a lie. I’ll be packing. Oy.

Not only were the past days incredible because of our work, we were also invited for dinner last night by one of the fathers (Ring Deng) whose three children (Yosef, Aboulati, and Akot) are at the gan. Yesterday afternoon, we gathered at the gan and went home with his wife (I carried the baby, Akot, who is about seven months old now and chewing on everything he can, my hair included). In addition to making us the most delicious Sudanese feast (two types of chicken, plates of rice and salad, vegetables, and a heart-shaped cake!) she refused to allow us to help in the kitchen because it would simply be “not African” to allow guests to help with a meal. As we were sitting down to dinner, there was a knock at the door, and to our surprise, Aboba joined us! We were all screaming, so excited (and shocked) that she was there, having dinner with us and Ring Deng’s family. Perhaps my favorite part of the night was hearing their story; before arriving in Israel, Ring and his family spent five years in Egypt, where he owned a bakery and where their oldest child, Yosef, was born, and have been in Israel for three years. However, in six months, they will return to South Sudan permanently; Ring Deng has sisters and more family still in Sudan, as does his wife. The entire night left me in awe: people who have struggled so much and who have so little opened their home and their hearts to us and were some of the most generous and welcoming hosts I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet.

In keeping with the theme of selflessness, today was our last day at the gan, and after all these weeks, I finally realized what an unbelievable person Aboba is. She spends her days caring for children, none of whom are her own, feeding them, soothing them, drying their tears. She puts their needs before her own, always. Aboba is a true example of endless compassion, of sacrifice and love and kindheartedness. Of course, when necessary, she disciplines them and puts them in their place, but she is, most of all, an incredible woman and mother figure to children who would otherwise spend their days parentless and unoccupied.

To celebrate our time at the gan and to thank Aboba for everything she does, we threw the kids a mesiba (a party), in true American style, complete with pizza, music and dancing! The kids, to say the least, were quite overwhelmed. The idea of eating pizza from the “pointy end” first was quite foreign, as was eating your pizza and then drinking your Coke (they were all dipping the pizza in the Coke and thought it was culinary genius).

We also made a food basket for Aboba, filled with bags of rice and pasta, cakes and crackers, juice and other goodies we know she would never buy for herself. Upon receiving it, she sang at the top of her voice in Dinka, danced and held up the card we made for her, so excited she could barely contain herself. Though the language barrier always made things difficult, it was clear that Aboba appreciated our gift and was sad to see us leave; I’ve learned that thankfulness (and happiness) are universal and are understood in any language. When I gave her a hug goodbye, I saw her eyes tear (as did mine) and the kids wrapped themselves around my legs, one last time, as I struggled to get out the door. The rickety front door slammed behind me a final time, and I heard the lock latch to prevent any potential escapees from fleeing. Waiting outside was the “gan cart,” a shopping cart I had “rescued” from Home Center that we used to schlep paint and supplies from the mall to the gan (it’s a very hilly walk), but this time, it was filled with empty paint cans, fraying brushes and trash bags stuffed with paper towels and other evidence of our project. I’ll miss that shopping cart; it served us well in its time, but I’m pretty sure the weight of the paint, Aboba’s gift and other necessities we piled into it forced it into gan cart retirement.


On one side of the gan’s new and improved yard, we painted the Dr. Seuss quote: “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you.” I think that this group of girls who changed the gan, and the lives of the people in it, is truly unique. We worked through miscommunications (in English, Hebrew, Dinka and Arabic. Yes, all at once), juice spill disasters, relentlessly screaming, crying children and reaching our wits’ end only to find that loving those children was inevitable. We fell in love with a single room and the woman who lives there, with the people and a place so foreign at the beginning it was scary, only to have it become a place filled with laughter and warmth, where we could walk around with no shoes on (plus, the kids loved “hiding” our shoes at the end of the day, when they knew it was time for us to leave, so we would stay for another ten minutes pretending to be utterly confused as to where our shoes had disappeared) and hands full of paint. It was a place to feel at home, to feel a part of something much larger and more important than ourselves. We made a change in the gan, and I can say with little doubt that the gan changed all of us.

Saying goodbye is never easy, but knowing my time here was well-spent, and that (hopefully) Aboba will always remember the six American girls who painted the walls and played with the children, I leave with a feeling of accomplishment. While that accomplishment is certainly accompanied by that same emptiness, I know that the void will soon be filled by a new adventure and new challenges awaiting me in Rwanda.

As always, thank you for reading. I promise to post pictures soon, in between packing for Rwanda and picking the paint out of my hair.

Love always,
Elana