Today was the best day I've had in the classroom! The teachers were extra giddy and loved the kids so much! It may have been because we only had half of the class too. It's been raining the entire week but this morning was really bad so a lot of the children stayed home. Remember I said I work in the township. A township is just that. It's a town even though its surrounded by a nicer area. Inside of the township are houses, stores, schools, doctors... Anything you would need to operate a town. The only thing is everything is located inside of a shanty or inside of a trailer type structure. We drive past a barbershop every morning on the way to work that is a trailer with barber chairs lined on one side and on the other side are seats where the customers wait. The barbershop can't be bigger that 20ft long and 6 feet wide. Every business in the township is gated and most of the stores sell things out of a window instead of people being able to walk in. This could be because it's too small or there's too much risk of theft.
All of our children live in the township. One in particular is Dean who is the favorite of the volunteer that works with me. He wasn't at school today and she was telling the teacher how she missed him. The teacher told us he lives just a few steps from the school and we could walk to go see him if we want. We thought she was just kidding so we didn't take her serious. But while I was leading the circle time Kristen (the volunteer) and the teacher left. When they came back Kristen told me they had walked to Deans house and saw him. She told me she was so shocked to see how he lived because he always dressed so nice at school. I felt like it was scene from one of those movies like "Lean on Me". She told me she walked up to his house and there were three old men smoking outside of the shanty. She said it was really dark and dirty inside of the shanty and there were 6 other kids other than Dean. Those kids were his older brothers and sisters. When Dean saw her he ran up to her and hugged her really tight saying "Teacha!" I was so jealous of Kristen's story! Especially since she told me my favorite stayed right across the road from Dean. She said she saw his mom and she said he was still sleeping. I'm hoping I'll get a chance to go somewhere with the teacher one day. And this teacher is the one I would get frustrated with. Weirdly now I love her! I just had to get past her tough attitude, but under that she's so funny and it's obvious that she cares for the children. I'm learning that being tough is a defense mechanism here because things are so rough. And the children are bound to learn it because they need that tough layer in a sense to survive in their environment. I just want to show the children that there's more to life than fighting and getting what you want. I feel if I do that I will be playing a part in changing the direction of the future generation.
I'll be going on a 3 day safari this weekend so I'll be posting pictures from that next week! I hope everyone is great!
