Mwalimu (Teacher)

Today I started my placement at the Faraja Orphan Center! I'm working with about 30 3-7 year olds. There's another volunteer, Sarah from London, that I'm working with, and we got there today, the head teacher doesn't speak much English so we had a translator for a bit, but we were basically introduced to the kids, who also don't know too much English, and then we were told to teach! Apparently Sarah and I are supposed to be teaching English and Math to these kids by ourselves for the next 2 months (the last month I'll be by myself because Sarah leaves before I do)! We were pretty overwhelmed! It's so hard to try and teach them things when we can only speak the basics of their first language! But it got better by the end! I worked on the alphabet and counting with a bunch of them for awhile and they did great! Then the last hour of class, we took them all outside to play for a bit, and I was sitting on a chair watching, and this little boy Jonah came over, climbed into my lap, and just curled up in my arms sucking his thumb for a half hour! And t...here were two little girls, Salome, who was probably 5 and weighed about 20 pounds, wanted me to carry her constantly, and Nasari, who wouldn't smile and only said yes all day, but was glued to my side and holding my hand. She had never seen long blonde hair before so she kept playing with it! When it was time for them to leave, Nasari came running up to me to give me a hug, kissed my cheek, and said "Bye Teacher!" They were adorable! It's definitely gonna be tough trying to teach English as a second language since I've never had any kind of training for that, but these kids are sooo worth it!

The head teacher is very hard to understand but you could tell that when Sarah and I told him how long we would be volunteering for, he was so grateful. After the kids left for the day, the head teacher bought Sarah and I cokes and cookies, and said to us "This is your home. Be free here. Welcome. And thank you so much."