People

 Today is Sunday, our only day off.  I just woke up after 10.5 hours of sleep.  In this blog post I'd like to tell you about the people we are meeting.  

   There are six of us living in our house:

Dennis is a retired social worker.  The focus of his career was with troubled youth.   He worked in The GB school System at an alternative school.

Lori Ann is also from GB and works at United Health Care.  Through her own diligence and through her employer, she brought with her a ton of age appropriate activities for the children.  Our leader said it was the largest donation of usable items that they have received.

Mike is a retired Theology professor from Marquette University who lives in Wauwatosa.  He serves as an inspiration to us all.  Mike was already here for a two week stint and went home only to return with us for a week.  He is taking a week off and returning again for two more weeks. 

Savannah is 28 and joins us from Peoria, IL.   While she looks like she is 12 years old, she is married to an active duty Marine and her degrees and experience are in child healing from trauma through play.  She also does wonderful work with the mothers group.  

Asian University Women:  I briefly mentioned that these women fled Afghanistan and while at Ft. McCoy they have come forward to volunteer with us and are also being utilized as unofficial translators.  Like everyone else, they don't know when they will be leaving but they all seem to be working on continuing their educations in the US.  Some already have acceptances at Universities in Milwaukee, AZ and perhaps Virginia.  

Active Military:  We have virtually no interaction with the Army Personnel.  Through the AUW women we have learned that the army personnel have a great relationship with the Afghans.  There is not a lot of interaction but they are respectful, they are good with the children and most importantly they know it was the military who kept them safe for twenty years and got them safely out of the country as the Taliban took over. 

 

  One of our volunteers introduced herself to an Afghan AUW woman and told her that her son served in Afghanistan.  Her son now has severe PTSD and the mom said he wonders if he just wasted that time.  So many soldiers died.  The Afghan woman told her that the Americans saved her and went on to say that there is a whole generation of Afghan women that were educated while the U.S. Army was in their country.  When she talked to the volunteer she referred to the last 20 years as the time of Light.  The volunteer sobbed.  

Other volunteers:  We have met many people from around the state.  Many volunteers are from the Tomah area, some come from Madison.  We've met Lutheran Pastors, Catholic nuns, a young Mennonite man from Curtis, WI who plans on staying through December, a woman who works 5 days a week at the base and volunteers on Saturdays, a man from Heartland who comes over 2-3 days a week and stays in his trailer, a retired physician and his wife who drive an hour from home each week to spend a day.  There seems to be a significant number of retired teachers volunteering here.

   Many of the people we have met have been here a lot.  What makes our little group different from the others is the sequential number of days that we are here.  14 days is a long time.  While rewarding our time here is exhausting.  

   Time to wrap this up.  Thanks for taking the time to share in this adventure.  

Ken & Cathy

Kblaney55@hotmail.com

Cblaney55@hotmail.com