a.Traveling into the colonies with the medical teams to help care for the leprosy affected patients.
b.Teach the children English or work with them through tutoring Math and Reading
c.Help build anything to help with microcredit load ideas… I will know more about this when I actually go and help out!
*After our meetings, we walk over to the school (five min. walk)... we got there early this morning so we were able to hear them recite their morning prayers and have morning announcements!
9:00 – begin tutoring sessions
Each of the children are in “standards” which is equivalent to our grades in elementary and high school. You tutor them in fourty minute blocks.
*The little library that we tutor in
11:00-11:15 – PT time with the kids outside. This normally means playing a lot of tag or “chase” and dripping sweat but not caring one bit!
*Nashanti and I after PT time! I have been spending a lot of time with her :)
11:15 – 12:00 – continue tutoring in math and English
12:00-12:30 – eat lunch with the kids; they are all so loving and sweet, always saying, “Auntie, auntie, come and sit with me auntie!”; my favorite is when some of the little boys will walk by us eating lunch and try and show off their little muscles, haha :)
12:30- 2 – More tutoring!! You don’t get tired of reading and helping these kids with their classes. One of the little girls that is in my “family” each night was one of the last ones that I got to tutor today. Her name is Maliyambee, and she helped me to pick out about 30 books to read for family time tonight! All of the girls would keep coming up to make sure that I had gotten the book that they had asked for last night! How fun!!
2-4 – break
4:30 – 6 – play time with the kids
This is one of my favorite times during the day! The kids and I played on the swings most of the time, but when we weren’t playing on the swings, you could find us braiding hair or racing up and down the monkey bars. If you stop to take a breath, you realize how tired you are, but you never stop and the kids don’t either so you just keep going and laughing. Whew! I love it!!
Another thing about play time is that I continue to try to learn each of the kids names. One girl in particular that I spent a lot of time with, Anitha, is very adamant that I say each of her friends names perfectly. If I ask one of the kids what their name is, she will quickly answer for them and then when I repeat it, she will typically laugh at first and say her friend’s name again, and then get kinda mad after she has had to correct me three or four times haha- I am hopefully going to have these names down in the next couple of days… they are very different. Most of them can say my name (“Taaosha”), but still will call me “auntie” (what they call all of the female volunteers)!
*All of the kids waiting to traid in their "star stickers" that they get for good behavior for fun things from their "star store"- we are not allowed to give the kids anything becuase they are really trying to teach them that they need to work for what they get!
*Sagayamary (on my right) is one of the queitest girls I have ever met but is also the sweetest, it is fun to be around her because she is always smiling
6-7:30 – dinner
7:30-9 – “family time”
I especially loved family time tonight. I went over to the rooms with the children that I spend each night with and brought a couple of books tonight that I had checked out from their library. They were really excited about, what I thought was going to be me reading to them. Instead, they were just excited that I had brought books that they could read to me!! I thought this was neat… they just love to read and learn.
Another favorite part of tonight was getting to sing to all of the kids. All of the girls in my “family” sleep in a small room on mats laid out on the floor. They love to be sung and I love to sing so it is a perfect end to a night! After we had turned out the lights, I would sing one song, and then they would keep saying, “one more song auntie, one more!” (they especially love songs that praise Jesus… or “You are My Sunshine”) You cannot say no to them, so of course I would sing again and again.
It was the neatest opportunity ever – while I was singing, one by one they would get up, realizing that they had not said their prayers, and they would kneel on their mat and whisper their prayer. What was so touching was that it was never just a quick prayer, but they would kneel there for five plus minutes, with their faces scrunched up concentrating on what they were saying. I don’t think that I will ever sing “Nearer My God to Thee” in a more perfect setting.
*All of the girls in my family asleep :)
I also cannot get over just how open to love these children are. Many of them come from very abusive homes in the colonies (which I do not want to relate with all of the parents in the colonies… it is just a sad thing that happens all over the world). This is hard to understand because of how much love they show us as volunteers and each other… They are never hesitant to run up to you and give you a hug, or invite you to play or help you or someone else with anything. I guess I just know how much harder it is for children to express love so openly when they have not seen it consistently for themselves and assumed that they would have a hard time as well. This just shows the miracle of change that love can have on anyone. Even the volunteers- service for others and love received brings out the best in a person.
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