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It's Tuesday. Wow. There are so many highs and lows. Last night I was depressed, although it had actually been quite a good day. I took my first class jointly (with fellow volunteer Georgina from Mexico). Standard 5 - Maths lesson. We calculated areas. In the afternoon i took my first solo class - a group of standard zeros (the youngest ones - 4 or 5 years old!) 3 of them live at the orphanage, while 2 of them came from the community. 'Community' means the village of Buswelu, where we are physically based. Some kids have relatives, even if it just one, so they dont need to live at the orphanage. There are other orphans out there, its difficult to know who exactly they are but you just KNOW that they are there. Hundreds of kids line the street on our 30 minute walk from our compound, where we live, to the orphanage. Because you have to take time greeting them and responding to them, it takes twice as long to walk the route as it could.
In terms of what i am teaching, well its early days. But i guess the better i plan my lessons in advance the better it will be. For now, I am just making it up and hoping to get through the hour or so classtime. At the mo, i am teaching 8.45-9.45 and then again 3.00-4.00 with other less formal activity between and after that. Yesterday I spent pretty much the whole day at Hisani (the orphanage's proper name). Hisani means kindness by the way. I took some photos and played games, and read, going with the flow.
There are difficult political issues regarding the orphanage which i will not go into here as it wouldn't be appropriate. Suffice to say, I am struggling at times to take in some of the issues. Tom is leading the way with his passionate outbursts, while the rest of us are being more reflective and weighing up whats best for the kids and what isn't. What is common is that all hearts are with the kids' welfare. Despite all the things we could complain about (lack of electricity, lack of materials to teach with) we are getting on with the thing we came to do - teach. We will have the opportunity to do other things - like build (or buy) benches for the kids to sit on, paint murals and educate them on their rights - but all in good time.
Luckily, I have been able to upload some photos for the first time, but you will have to go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phil_longwell/
to see them.
Let me know if you can see them and respond via this site - on my message board. I will try and upload some more in the future.
Anyway, got to go count with Standard Zero... so best get a Daladala back to Buswelu village... badaai (later!)
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