We began the week by traveling in two jeeps to the village of Gyerkum/Lambo, south of Karatu. The landscape was lush with trees and fields of corn (planted by hand!), and dotted with small huts and cement houses of the local people....
.....and we arrived to see a well-kept village church and preschool that previous teams had helped build.
The church was looking great, but the preschool needed paint......a job for the day for part of our team. We were met by an excited group of small children from the preschool who were anxious to show us some circle games they learned and they won all of our hearts, especially Megan's....
The guys on the team were able to paint the needed areas of the preschool, but with some trouble in getting the proper materials....like paint and a few more ladders! But they made do, and Greg got up on the hot tin roof and painted anyway, ladder or no ladder!
While painting was getting underway, I went to the nearby primary school where Hosanna teams had remodeled two classrooms, including raising the walls and roof for more light (there is not electricity and windows provide the light!), built two classrooms and two staff quarters. Still, I was sad at what I saw.....overcrowded dirty classrooms, lack of books and supplies, and poorly staffed. The English teacher asked if I could help teach in a sixth grade class....and I was greeted by nearly 50 smiling faces standing up to greet me in English and eager to learn! The school holds over 700 students with about 15 teachers. Desks designed for two students hold double that.
The class started with a song for me....
I observed the kids struggling to share one book for 5 kids, some not being able to even follow along. I went around helping a few of them find their places, and then the teacher turned the class over to me. He had another class to teach and staff have to just leave their classes alone when they leave! Never in America! But I was so impressed with their respect and discipline. They were a joy to teach!
Later that afternoon, Kim (the first grade teacher) joined me and we helped in a first grade math class.
The teacher asked us if we wanted to take them outside to learn some games......I was SO GLAD we had a primary teacher among us! They loved "Hokey Pokey", "Farmer in the Dell", and a few others. Pretty soon, young kids started coming from everywhere to watch us!
We both left the school with mixed emotions.....frustrated at the sad state of public schools, but impressed with how the children love school. Some kids walk for miles to go to school. We were determined to try and help this school in some way.
To start with, later in the week we brought a suitcase full of pencils, pens, soccer balls, jump ropes, and even a parachute!
We also bought 50 uniform sweaters to hand out to those who didn't have any or were nearly in rags. The teacher rounded them up and brought them to his office. After passing them out to the thankful kids ("asante sana....thank you very much!") we looked around and saw a sea of red....it was a highlight of the trip for me! I can just imagine the smiles on their parents' faces when they came home!
We also made a commitment to buy 50 English textbooks after seeing 180 students share less than 20 books. The problem we had, though, was finding them. It seems that the government continually changes the curriculum, so the current ones would not be used next year. We've decided to wait and buy the new ones for the next year......just another roadblock we had to get around.
No comments:
Post a Comment