Little toy guns with rubber bands. Dogs in the streets and horses on the sides. Trash everywhere. Coca-Cola to buy and cigarettes to sell. Art, graffiti, babies on backs. Flip flops or barefoot is how they run. Metal, aluminum, cardboard, fabric. Satellite dishes and hanging wires. Buses, horns, so much honking. Sand, dirt, and dust. Clicking, talking, yelling. Gates and fences or cinder blocks. Tires, cars, makeshift gardens.

This is the outside of a place. This is what you see, but this is not what you think. This may be the Africa you'd expect to know, but it's not what's so striking about the place and people.

Any place you go there is an overwhelming sense of community. Blocked out only by language, there is much to observe. Potential, joy, and desire overpower what you'd anticipate to be angry and struggle. Which are present, without a doubt, but to see how a place sculpts a person without diminishing them is to look into the eyes of a child and feel their happiness.

Kids don't know any better. They don't know any different. To be from the States and compare the upbringings of these kiddos to your own is just unfair. It's two different corners of the world with the same needs, different circumstances, and varying resources. Regardless of feeling so much guilt and frustration when you see some of the places the kids go home to, these are homes. Generations may have been born in the very place that serves every purpose for families. It's way too small, accommodating so many people it could burst. And yet, kids don't know any better.

Playing across the streets, shuffling in small flip flops, following the big kids around, it's just what they know. Seeing one of the boys who's still too little to play with the older boys making a soccer ball out of tightly wrapped plastic bags or a Pringles can is upsetting in that something that feels so basic is not a common possession. And yet, they still play because they don't know any other way. At school, they learn, laugh and play like any other. When they're little, they will mimic anything and smile all the while.

Then you throw in a 'volunteer.' This girl or boy that sets out to help a cropped vision of Africa that includes something along the lines of 'the starving kids in Africa.' They believe that with their own two hands, they'll contribute to crippling some evil, correcting some wrong, or erasing the scars left by another's mistakes. But you may not believe that everything you expect will be wrong. Everything you think you know is wrong. You're going to Africa, but not the one you think.

Africa is not 'the Africa.' The continent is made up of such different countries; it cannot and should not be clumped into one word all the time. There are cities, places prospering, the lavish living just across the highway from rural piles of aluminum shacks. Some parts of the countries are extremely developed and others are at a level which in most terms would be indescribable on account of disbelief. No two places are the same and generalizing is the easiest way to get yourself into something you couldn't have anticipated.

Then there's color. This topic is not taboo where I'm at. One's own color is known and there really isn't whispering about it like in the States. But let's for a second say that this "volunteer" is white. In the cities, you will be just okay. It's like any other city except five steps later you'll remember that you are the minority now. In rural areas, you're the spectacle. There's no hiding your skin and you will feel a type of insecurity that you may have never felt before. It doesn't mean you won't be welcomed, but don't think that time will make you forget just how different you are to them. While talking about the color of your skin may be fine in context, it still can be a determinant of how you are initially viewed, much thanks to history.

Then there's this expectation of need. Wherever said 'volunteer' goes, they expect that their help will be wanted, welcomed, necessary, and impactful. It may be, especially to the little kids that jump at the opportunity to hug you, touch your hair, or take a picture. That's not really your point though. Their smiles in pictures may make it seem like you being there is beneficial, but is it? Kids don't know they need help or that you're there to help them in some way. You're just a new, very different face. You're a lap to sit on and hands to hold. You may try to teach them for the time you're there but all you really mean is one afternoon of a little extra happy and attention that may not have been fulfilled at home or in a big class.

Projects can be helpful and trying to implement better and healthier practices could work. You just don't know. Somewhere among everything you're taking in at one time, there is a hole you can fill. Even if it's small, that has to be important enough.

I'm one of these "volunteers." I was wrong. Everything I envisioned and expected, though on some levels slightly accurate, was conclusively wrong. My hand in this place won't really change anything big. People still live in the same homes, the starch contrast of those prospering versus those apart is still evident, and the kids I get the pleasure of knowing still play barefoot among trash using it to create their equipment. I'm getting to see a little corner of Africa and it truly is nothing that I could have expected.

I spoke about the outside, what you'd see driving through a rural area. But I could never describe how it feels to see this part of a place and a people, then cross into a city where burgers are ten dollars, people are paragliding off of mountains looking over such a beautiful place, homes are some the biggest I've seen, and businesses commercialize some sought after image of the real 'Africa.'

How do you enjoy a place, even love a place, that is still so opposing?