By Chris Noble | Program Liaison
In a few weeks i'm going to celebrate my 20th Diaversary. That's right, 2 decades of living with my diabetes. I've taken it on countless presentations, infosessions and classrooms, dozens of cities and states and even a handful of countries and continents. I've gone through the life of a highschooler, the challenges of university and now the honor of my graduate program. I've had numerous lows and countless highs and have developed some minor super powers like seeing food as carbs and carbs as insulin. But what I've loved the absolute most about my 20 years with my diabetes is the people i've met living with theirs and the celebrations we've shared together.
Camp Ami was the first time I have been to the western side of the beautiful island of Hispanolia and the experience was one I will never forget. I have to admit, my Spanish is stronger that my French and my French is magnitudes greater than my Creole (Muen Relay Cristof is my name is Chris and that's about all I got), but even so, when myself alongside the other AYUDA volunteers met our local partners for the first time and shared our experiences with diabetes and what this program means to us, it was as if we all knew each other through our mutual friend, diabetes. We asked each other the international diabetes ice breaker of "what's your favorite low snack?". Mine has always been peanut butter crackers while my friend Amos' was fruit and honey. We shared how long we've been living with our diabetes and what it meant to us to share our condition with others.
This is where the value of these celebrations really presents itself.
Coming from 20 years of knowing my condition, I wear my pancreas (or lack there of, a functional one that is) on my sleeve. For a few others it took some time, but after hearing a few stories of some of our same ups and downs (literally) you could tell the mood in the room really began to pick up. What started off as an ice breaker developed into a full fledged celebration that carried through throughout the week. At Camp Ami the same energy and thrill to thrive showed itself in our dance parties, musical chairs, countless ball games and relay races and water games in the beautiful clear blue waters. We laughed, we cried, we danced and we shared.
We celebrated our diabetes not as diabetics, but as friends, who happened to see food as carbs and carbs as insulin.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
