MEAGAN ALBAN
OF HENDRIX COLLEGE has been selected the SCAC
Character & Community Female Student-Athlete-of-the-Week for
the week ending April 25, 2010.
Alban, a senior from Allen, Texas, is a
member of the women's softball team at Hendrix and will
graduate this spring with a degree in Early Childhood Education and
a 3.7 GPA.
Along with seven of her teammates and head coach Amy Weaver,
Alban went to Nassau, Bahamas last summer on a
mission: to improve the squalid conditions of the All Saints AIDS
Camp.
The overcrowded compound, once a leper colony, is home to
dozens of children and adults living with AIDS. Most were
abandoned by their families, left at the gates of the camp once
their illness was discovered. The patients live in shacks, with
rooms just large enough to contain a twin-size bed, and receive
government-subsidized medicine.
“All the houses are run-down, so they’re trying to build more houses to have better facilities to live in,” said Alban, who coordinated the trip. “It was scary to see that these people could live there every day of their lives. Their immune systems are already compromised, so in those kinds of conditions they just get sicker. It was heartbreaking.”
The women, including a Hendrix basketball player who tagged
along, worked hard to improve the standard of living at the
camp, splitting their time between rebuilding the crumbling
sidewalks and constructing new houses. The sidewalks were an
obstacle for many of the camp's residents, who are weak and
often need wheelchairs to get around, so
the team worked hard to complete a new cement
walkway.
“Being in shape for softball translated into being able to do
a lot more work. They were surprised that we could carry one bag of
cement each, because they weigh 95 pounds. On the housing
construction site we had sledge hammers going to crack up the
walls, and hammers, and we were lifting tons of boards,”
Alban said. “Coach Weaver is a coach who
really pushes us, and we all pushed each other to help other
people. We worked as hard as we could to get the work
done.”
A few of the camp residents pitched in to help, but most were too
ill for physical exertion. Those who were mobile enough to leave
their beds sat on their porches and shouted encouragement to the
volunteers.
“They were an inspiration,” she said. “I think we
learned more from those people than what we gave back to them. We
gave a lot, and we got so much back through support and
worship.”
The team brought bags of clothing donations, as well as some special presents for the children of the camp. The girls were given hair barrettes, and the boys received yo-yos. The team also bought mosquito coils, bug spray and butane fuel for the residents, who could not afford those necessities.
Shocked by the conditions of the camp, several players also left their tennis shoes at the camp, so some of the residents would no longer have to go barefoot.
"I even gave away my watch," Alban said. "We figured it was stuff that they needed more than we did."
The team also brought hundreds of pounds of softball equipment
– uniforms, bats, balls, helmets and gloves – which
they donated to the Bahamas Softball Federation.
Alban, who is president of Hendrix’s
Fellowship of Christian Athletes, began planning the mission trip
last August. She and the other softball players volunteer
frequently, both independently and as a team, so she wanted to
create an affordable mission opportunity for her teammates.
The mission trip was sponsored and largely funded by the Hendrix
Odyssey program, a curricular program that offers funding and
credit for students’ experiential learning projects. The
players each earned an Odyssey credit in the Service to the World
category.