Learning more about the school

---

I was woken up at 3am this morning as three of the volunteers who had gone up North returned in the middle of the night. I generally didn't sleep that well all night anyway, had woken up even before that, as I have so many mosquito bites that it's difficult to sleep, particularly with the heat.

I got to school just after 9am, and this morning the children were learning poems. Then they did some copying of numbers, so I had to set up each students book with "Write 74" or whatever number they'd got up to. I'd draw about 30 dots over the page, and on each dot they had to write the number. They love it when I write a comment on the bottom of their books, although they can't read them. The other day, I told Priscilla that her work was perfect. Priscilla is about 5 years old and has her hair always done beautifully in braids with coloured beads. She beamed and went and sat back down. Then, with a little shimmy of her shoulders, and a smug tone, she said "Obruni says my work is perfect!" to the girl next to her. It was rather cute. The teacher hates it when they call me Obruni though, she tells them off and reminds them to call me Auntie.

One little boy, Alfred, is really not good at anything we do in class. He is slow to write, and when he does, he sometimes gets his letters muddled. I don't think they recognise dyslexia here though. So, to the teacher, Alfred is a lazy, good for nothing boy who is trouble. She hopes he passes his end of year exam though, as she says she is fed up of having him in her class. Today as per usual, Alfred didn't copy his letters from the board like the others did once we got on to the writing lesson. So Lucy caned him over the arms repeatedly. So hard that the end of the cane snapped off. He sat there with tears streaming down his face, leaving little trail marks where his face was grubby as it's very dusty in this town. He has very sad eyes, does Alfred. I just wanted to scoop him up and cuddle him. I hope that as things progress here, they will start understanding a bit more about learning difficulties etc.

Children in other classes always want to come and sit with me at lunch. They are particularly fascinated by Obruni's hair, as it is so different to theirs. One little girl in the younger class, Victoria, came to sit on my lap at break and spent ages just twisting my hair around her fingers. Cute.

---