Healing Arts

Like Little One, AFC's founder is a force of positive energy. 
This hospital project began with her scrubbing walls, with the help of one of the AFC kids who has grown up and trained as a painter.  Then came me and my kids.  Then some of our founder's friends came to see what she was up to.  They ended up sponsoring the cost of the paint, they ended up rolling up their sleeves and pitching in. 

 

 Some of the nurses in their white coats joined us.   Friends brought friends, AFC donors heard and came to see, and stayed to help. 

The AFC kids became a fleet of artists, cutting out vinyl butterflies and painting rainbows.  They brought their friends.  

Random hospital visitors gave their phone numbers and asked to be invited to help on future projects.  Some of the patients themselves joined us, making their own environment better, proving that everyone has something to give.

The last day I was there to help, we had so many willing hands there wasn’t enough work to go around. Some volunteers instead blew used painting gloves into balloons and played with the patients.  They chatted with parents, they played music. People were smiling, laughing.  In the time we spent there, people had gotten to know us, to look forward to the entertainment of watching a dreary room become a garden or an ocean or a sunlit sky. 

They were amazed.  They thanked us and oohed and ahhhed.  The little patients gave ideas and directed the placement of cartoon animals.  A little to the left, where I can see it from my bed.  A little lower, where a small child could see it.  It became a colorful fabric of community for us all to hold on to together.  To bring people closer, lift them up a little.  
It was just a little paint.  
A little paint in the middle of a kind of hell. But it mattered.
But it showed that a little bit of caring can plant smiles in the most unlikely places.   
It can cultivate hope in a barren landscape. 
Some things about the hospital experience were very hard.  But if a person living there for days, weeks, and months can find laughter in a painted rainbow, I have no right not to.   
This project is ongoing.  Since we left Ethiopia, AFC has continued to paint rooms and distribute smiles.  AFC hopes that the success of the project will inspire more hospitals to allow us to enliven the children's wings, and that this project will grow and grow.  There are plans to send in teams of volunteers on an ongoing basis to the rooms that have been finished, to touch them up, wash them off, and remind people that we care.  

If it sounds like fun to you, visit the volunteer page on the website and send an email. 
I can pretty well guarantee you one of the hardest and best experiences of your life. 
The time I spent on this project reminded me of something I try to keep in mind, in a world that stereotypes and tries so often to see in only black and white; here on earth there is no heaven.  There is no hell.  People ache and suffer in the most "perfect" and rich environments; and there is beauty and joy in the poorest and most difficult.  There are devils in the dreamlands, and there are certainly angels in the nightmarish places.  In the end it all just runs together, a great swirl of good and bad wherever you go, whoever you may be.  Far from black and white.  A sea of color.