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Africa School Part IIWhat We Saw At The Africa School
One of the most fulfilling things I've done in my life so far was teaching in the Africa school grade three class every morning. At first, I tried for the whole day, but the 40+ degrees Celsius afternoon heat proved to be too much for me. Jim would drop me off in the morning and pick me up at noon most days so he got to know the children as well. Culturally taught to respect men, Rukia's Africa school was no different. We got a kick out of the students all standing up and offering a formal greeting to Jim each time he dropped by. My first working day was an eye opener. There were 5 classrooms, 3 in the stucco building and two more in the stick huts across the courtyard. The grade-three classroom was the only one with furniture which consisted of 4 small wooden tables, two wooden benches, and a number of very broken down child-sized plastic lawn chairs.
The chairs would be strategically stacked on top of each other, one providing a leg or arm that had been broken on the other. There was no chair or desk for the teachers. I was honored with being given the one-and-only chair the school owned that usually sat at the table in the courtyard under a tree. There were 22 to 25 students in my grade-three class. The other students were divided according to age among the other classes, sometimes with as many as 50 or more taking their lessons on woven mats on the floor. The overcrowding was an evident stress for both the children and teachers. Kids are kids anywhere. Put them too close together and poking and prodding and giggling aren't long breaking out. The teachers become frustrated and natural tension follows. My classroom had a small, homemade blackboard that was about 2 1/2 feet wide by 2 feet long. Old pieces of crumbling sponge were used as the eraser. A few cherished pieces of chalk were carefully kept by the teacher. Each lesson had to be written on the board because most of the children and the teacher didn't have their own books to follow from. Shortage of Basic SuppliesThe teacher often borrowed a book from one of the students who was lucky enough to have one. The mathematics and English lessons were the hardest to present. Among the group, I counted only 5 mathematics books and 4 English books.The books would be distributed among the four tables, seated by 6 or more students that were meant to seat 4. Pushing and pulling a book back and forth between the students trying to write out the lesson into their work books was an almost impossible task. The children used straight razor blades to sharpen their pencils, which gave me shivers to watch. The pencils were used to their full capacity, most being only little stubs. Erasers were also in short supply and were shared around between them. 
In The SchoolyardOutside there was the typical outdoor washroom facility –- a latrine. It's a whole dug in the ground that you place your feet firmly on each side of and squat to do your business. The door was in such disrepair that the very young children could hardly get it opened without it wanting to fall on top of them. It was very unsanitary, and I fortunately never had to use it during my time there.In the schoolyard was a large water tank embedded onto a cement base. Equipped with a faucet, it provides water for drinking, for preparing food for the feeding program and washing. It was donated by a lovely couple from Toronto area that Jim and I corresponded with before our trip, who are mutual friends of our hosts. It was a neat feeling for me to see their name had been roughly inscribed in the cement base acknowledging their generous donation of clean water for this Africa school to help these beautiful African children. Beautiful, but hungry children, ill equipped with the most basic school supplies, wearing poorly fitting uniforms in bad repair, no sports or play equipment to speak of, yet never complaining, quick to smile and always making the best of what they had. How amazing! African School Part IIl TOP of Africa School Part II
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