Other thoughts.. and some photos I can now load!

The boy in the red shirt put the remnants of the stickers I gave them on his head! Funny!

In my other time here, I've been tutoring some children that are part of Carol's other program - they are orphaned or vulnerable, but not living with HIV. Due to poverty and not always having family around or family available to pay for school fees, some of them have been in and out of school, and are struggling to catch up. If you can imagine as well that in most schools there are 100's of students to one teacher. So if you are struggling, or not understanding, you can imagine that you just end up falling further and further behind. This has such a damaging effect on a child's self esteem and self worth. (also the teachers usually tell the children that they need to pay more attention or work harder)...

So I've been working with some of those children and they are such great kids. All the exams in the schools are in English, so if a child is struggling with English, then they really suffer. So we mostly try to work on English, reading, comprehension and writing. I also help them with math.

I've found that most of the children are having problems with their english, so if they could only get some more help with english, then they would do just fine in school.

One boy is the cousin of Solomon - the boy I've written about before. He's now under Solomon's care, as they and six others were living with Solomon's late grandmother. This boy's father was the one that murdered the grandmother. And this boy was regularly beaten by his father as well. He actually came home to find the father beating the grandmother, and was afraid, so he ran away. When he returned, he found the dead grandmother. And so he blames himself that his grandmother died. So he's had a lot of trauma in his life, and now is living with a foster family while Solomon is in boarding school... and he's struggling with english, and therefore getting poor grades in school and feeling even worse about himself. Luckily last week we had some one on one time, but I wish I had more time to spend with the children like him.

This week I brought stickers for them, so when they were finished the worksheets I made for them, they all got a sticker - WOW! That was a hit! I think for our last session, I will make them an award certificate for a job well done. I think they'll like that, and hopefully it will help them feel loved and special.