"Real" Work!

This evening, we engaged in some "real" work - we went with our Dinkas to visit some informal literacy classes that are going on here in the city. It was so interesting to see the classes and to see how they teach. It was as I had feared - lots of repetition and pointing with big sticks. But the people are so motivated to teach - the volunteer teachers are doing their best with few resources. In each class that we visited, we asked how many of the learners are also attending a local government run school. While the majority of the classes that I visited were made up of school-age children, only a very tiny minority of them are actually attending the government classes. And this is here in the "capital" city! Imagine what the situation is like out in the villages where people are just starting to return after so many decades of school. The situation here is pretty desparate in terms of the education system.

We are hoping to help this group in the coming year with a little bit of teacher training and helping to provide them with some books to use. The teachers who are there are already very motivated and are faithfully doing what they can, so it would be a pleasure to work with them and be involved a little bit. Plus, it's a great opportunity for me to a little more "hands-on" involved in a local school, which I have never really had the opportunity to do. All in all, I think it could be a very fruitful partnership for all of us.

I wish that I had some photos that I could post of these classrooms, but I didn't really want to go in there and start snapping photos like a tourist. Since it was our first visit to the classes, we were trying to be as unobtrusive as possible - not easy to do in a place where the "kawaija" get "greeted" by everyone on the street!

Perhaps I've already been of some help - a few of the older ladies in one of the classes asked me if I had any eye glasses for them. I obviously don't carry around that many extra pairs of reading glasses in my back pocket, but I did notice that the room in which they were studying was rather dark. So I suggested that perhaps it might make it easier for the ladies to see if they changed to a different room with bigger windows or even sat outside under the tree where it was lighter... they thought that was a pretty good idea. So maybe I've done some good tonight... :D