Meru Peak Day Care

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I have just finished my first week at Meru Peak Day Care center and I am thoroughly exhausted! There are roughly 60 students total ranging from 3-7 years old. I teach in the middle classroom with 30 students ages 4, 5, and 6. Thus far I have been in the classroom by myself as there is only one teacher for all three classes. Even though both of the other classes are much smaller they think that since I work in a school in the US that I can teach on my own. They do not understand that what I do at my school in the US is very different. There seems to be a common belief in Tnazania that all Americans must be better at teaching English than any teachers here. The teachers here are incredibly dedicated and work so hard for very little. They strongly believe that the only hope for a better future in Tanzania is the education of the younger generations.
My classroom has three times more boys than girls in a classroom which is not uncommon in this country as women's rights is only a recent development. Many of the children have been abandoned in some way or another and have had to fend for themselves for the most part. The classroom itself is approximately 6 feet by 15 feet. We have lessons from 8:00 - 10:30 everymorning, working mostly on ABC's, 123's, basic vocabularly and lots of singing. Every morning I am greeted with "Good Morning Madam" followed by a song thanking me for being there to teach them. Each student only gets half a sheet of paper each day, which has typically has been used many times before and a stub of a pencil. Some days it seems most of my time is spent shapening pencils and breaking arguments over the one or two erasers in the class. Next time I come to Africa my bag will be filled with erasers and pencil sharpeners. I am afraid after this week there will not be any more paper to use and the sheets they have been working on will be to covered with previous work to use any longer. Today three students would not write the alphabet and numbers because the sheet already had them complete from a previous day and they did not want to do them again unless they had new paper.
All of this being said I have never seen children so excited to learn and with so much positive energy. The students wait for us on the dirt path we walk down each morning and begin screaming and singing as son as they hear us coming. The students are so excited to be called on to answer questions, and often times jump out of their seats knocking over chairs to be the first to answer. So much of what they seem to know of English is memorazition becuase when I give them numbers or the alphabet out of order it becomes a complete guessing game, save serveral of the brightest students. We are usually greeted on the dirt path leading up to the school eah morning by 15 students each morning and escorted home by another 10 in the afternoon.

The cost to attend Meru Peak is 1,000 Tsh per month (1260 Tsh = $1). This cost is basically to cover the cost of porridge, and many of the students have a hard time coming up the the money every month. Baba Juma tried to increase the cost to 3,000 Tsh per month, but only a handful can pay and not on a consistent basis. So for less than it costs to buy a school binder in the US, a student can attend school, or NOT, in Tanzania. The other costs come directly from Baba Juma and donations of past volunteers. All of the supplies (hardly enough to fill two shelves on a bookcase) have come from volunteers.

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Photos

The Boys
Yohana, Cosmos, Justine, Silass