Thursday 19th November

Late afternoon Thursday – another shattering but very rewarding day.  We had an interesting session with the young staff today.  Having prised some information about themselves from them for the profiles we want to set up so that future volunteers will be able to quickly identify who is who and which class they teach (there are more than 50 teachers), we asked them for some more detail today.

Heads and shoulders with the kindergarten

We now know that most of them are actually at college studying for basic degrees – more like our foundation degree courses from what I can gather, so some more detail would be useful.  Because it can be quite hard to follow them, especially when they get excited, they offered to write it down for us. Once they started writing all sorts of very touching comments about their hopes and dreams and their family circumstances came out , which we will have to edit when we write the profiles, but were very moving to read and show how much they are trusting us.

We have been having long debates about what to do with all the extra lunch we are given – we get a packed lunch every day from the hotel. It is far too much and no matter what we say it never gets any less.  We’ve been giving the surplus to some street kids on our way home once or twice, but the older ones always take it all and beat up the younger ones if they try to get any.  Yesterday we took some cakes in for the staff,  and from the way they fell on them it became apparent that they too are very hungry. So today we took in a plate from the hotel – no plates at the school, they use tin bowls which they bring in themselves –  loaded it up with all the things we couldn’t eat and took it in to them.  You would have thought we’d given them a banquet!  They were so thrilled and invited us to join them with our lunches, which we did.  They told us that this has never happened before and that many of the volunteers have not been so friendly.  I imagine many may feel quite intimidated by the strangeness of it all, but for me in many ways it is like Romania all over again, only more so in terms of the poverty, and Mary would not be intimidated or put off by anything, so we make a good pair!  We took the little ones outside with the parachute today  and they had a whale of a time playing with it and learning the Hokey Cokey.  The two 2 year olds who hang around much of time because their parents work here were joining in.  They are gorgeous – and very bright!

It was lovely to pick up messages from various people today.  It is so good to hear from you because it does feel a very long way away at times.