By Abdelaziz Yakhlef, Morocco
Today is farewell day. It started early, as usual, right after the sun had just risen. Some of us, the house people, went to Valentine Hall for the usual breakfast. We took our time to eat and check our flights’ dates and luggage size; everyone was perplexed about what to take, what to drop off and what to give up on.
We headed down to Fayerweather Hall at Amherst college. Early as usual, academic director Bruce Watson had already been there preparing for his warm-up before we started the next lecture. It was about baseball and the rules of it. Moreover, we have been promised a baseball game to attend the following Friday in Arizona. At 9:00 a.m. Sara Barber-Just, an English teacher at Amherst-Pelham Regional High School, stepped in to give us a lecture about Applying inclusive strategies of LGBTQIA literature and how she had started her classes with different students. Sara, also, shared with us a little bit of family background.
By 10:45 a.m, after the lecture finished, Edgardo Rothkegel gave us an intensive guide tour about the trip to Arizona in detail and what we should expect from the trip. Half an hour later, Bruce and Katie Lazdowski started asking us about our feedback and review of the fourth week. It only lasted 3 days, but it was as intense as the ones before. I felt the mood change once we all realised that there are some of the ITD staff that we might never see again and had to say goodbye to.
Head tilted down, I walked out the lecture room to go grab lunch. Some of us took it quickly as they had to run to the vans and be at Not Bread Alone community service centre earlier. We, the ones who had to go to another community centre, Lorraine’s kitchen, stayed a little bit more to chit chat. I had to go to a gift store of Amherst college to buy some souvenirs. The only thing that caught my attention was a small palm-sized woolly mammoth that was on the counter. I asked for the price from the cashier who said it was not for sale; his girlfriend makes these mascot figures and he wants to show it to his boss in hope she might be interested in making a deal.
We ran towards the van because we were a little bit late, but we caught Raffi on time as she was preparing to move the van closer to where everybody else from the second group was waiting.
We set off towards Laurrine’s Kitchen at Chicopee and played music for the entire 30 minutes long journey; I dj-ed. Upon arrival, we entered the centre and had a mini-lecture by Jerry, one of the managers in the centre. He talked about the history, the services and the people who come very often. Once done, we started work. The tasks ranged between carrying stockings upstairs via a belt chain with the help of Eli, one of the staff members and volunteers. Some of us were distributing meals to the people in need whom we exchanged smiles and hellos with. I stayed for a while in the basement reordering cans and packages, flattening cardboard boxes and setting up donated clothes in different sizes. Everybody went down to help after they finished their tasks.
All opinions expressed by the program participants are their own and do not represent nor reflect official views from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, or of the Institute for Training and Development, Inc.
