School's out!

Now our school visits have finished, we are kicking back and remembering some contrasts and highlights. Four very different schools, each with their own strengths, and very different levels of facilities.... We have seen:

- brick built classrooms with tiled floors, as against three sided wooden structures with a tin roof, wooden partitions starting two feet off the ground, and chickens wandering between the classrooms (not to mention curious faces peering underneath or over the top);

- proper loos (albeit with no flush and only a short curtain in front and a loo seat whisked out of a cupboard especially for us), contrasted with little huts which we would rather not talk about!;

- big airy rooms where the two-year-olds have plenty of space to march around singing nursery rhymes, and tiny dark rooms with 70 toddlers in each, all made to sit in rows, almost on top of each other, and one teacher doing her best;

- teachers laughing along with the kids and clearly enjoying their job, and teachers looking thoroughly bored or annoyed and using their canes rather too fiercely;

- many "cultural dances" and musical performances put on by the children in the blazing heat, (30 to 35 degrees and very humid; hotter in the classrooms) with two of us joining in, much to everyone's amusement! And some great drama about the power of the cross;

- a school bus with 15 seats holding about 80 frolicking children, sitting three deep on each other's laps and filling the aisle;

- the older girls drawing water from the well to wash up the cooking utensils from lunch (and laughing at one member of our party because she didn't have the right technique for filling the bucket);

- the total conviction with which the children, all of them living difficult lives in a material sense, sang "My God is able and He will see me through....";

- the fear on the children's faces when they thought they might have given a wrong answer in front of their teacher, and the delight on their faces the moment they finished their origami "chatterbox"; and

- kids jumping a mile at J's scary lion roar!.

So many experiences, all crammed into seven days of school visits! We are a bit tired but it was a privilege to meet the visionary and determined owners of the schools, who battled so hard to get their schools started, and are still battling, in faith, to continue and expand them. They speak in glowing terms of the support they are receiving (both loans and business training) from Opportunity International and Sinapi Aba Trust.

We were very grateful to be able to contribute all the books donated by friends in the UK, which were enthusiastically received. Since the children previously had little but the basic state text book, it's great to be able to picture them immersed in those books in the months and years to come, gaining a new window on the world beyond their school gate.

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