The school - early days

The school is extraordinary. On my first day there, I couldn’t tell any of the 240 pupils apart and they just charged me like a bizarrely quiet but enormous rhinoceros made of over-eager children, all finger-spelling their names. Now I am learning to tell them apart and get to know them. I find them very rewarding because they are so pleased to have attention. It’s blissfully easy to make them smile and in fact, laugh and scream (not screams like you and I are used to – more guttural) with excitement too. These are two photos of the kindergarten class I help with. They are beyond lovely. When I turn up they are more pleased to see me than anyone ever has been, ever, and when I showed them pictures of themselves on my laptop they tried really hard to sit still but ended up climbing on their chairs, then over their desks, then running up to touch the computer. In the past two weeks I’ve wondered a lot what I can possibly bring while my Swahili and sign language are still so basic, but it felt like I did a good thing that day.

So here is Amina.

Amina is six. She is tiny, tiny, tiny and tries so hard. She is bright and loves getting her work ticked with my red pen. Her father is too poor to buy her a hearing aid, and when he collects her she just trots along beside him looking really happy – she has no idea how hard her life is going to be, and I feel a bit choked just thinking about it. What am I going to be like after three terms here? Will I need medical attention for dehydration because of excessive crying as my plane takes off? Anyway, she and another girl, Joyce, are my favourites in the class.

Joyce is on the other end of the line in this photo here of the class. Sorry - I know the formatting here is a bit wonky but I haven't worked out how to fix it yet.

Now, this snip-snap below is of the girls in the class in a maths lesson:

They are showing four fingers to show that there are four girls. Being able to count on fingers is an achievement at the moment, not a sign of being backward! The little girl with the funny-shaped head (like a hammer-head shark) is called Myasa – she was very ill when she came to the school and so is still very slow at maths and Swahili, but is super-affectionate. She won Musical Chairs yesterday.

The children are very smiley and full of life. Some of them can do back-flips and they love showing off. I have some videos but the internet connection here is painful enough as it is here: I’d actually have to make special arrangements to sleep overnight in the internet café to be there long enough to upload a video. Here is a picture of a (nameless and unidentifiable, ahem) boy in mid-back-flip off a rock.

I will write more about the school later, as there’s just too much to say in one post – but these were the things I think about when I wake up in the mornings. Next time I will tell you about the wildly varying standards in the school and the Executive Director, who is most religious and talks to me about “Jizzus” a lot. We also discuss “fissees” on more occasions than I think ideal, as we are planning a rebuild of the cesspit. In the meantime, enjoy your lovely flushing sewer-connected sit-down loo and velvety soft reassuringly-expensive quilted loo roll. Think of me in the school “restroom” on the first day, squatting nervously, replacement-flush bucket of water nearby – to be slightly discomfited by an enormous cockroach scuttling across the floor and enthusiastically diving RIGHT INSIDE THE SWANNY! So goodbye, goodbye until next time I can get a good enough connection to upload.