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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Fulani education Center update

Submitted by Michaela Sholes

Attendance has been a bit lower in the Fulani camp since the rainy season has been in full swing (bringing with it sickness and discomfort due to the cold wet weather), but it is those who are dedicated and who continue coming week after week who encourage us. It is also little surprises like realizing the children in the camp were on holiday today as well, following the Ghanaian holiday yesterday (Republic day), so we got to see their cheerful little faces again.

Although the men's session was almost non-existent today as they were either sick, running errands, or simply absent, we were able to use that time to review with the children who had come to join in. Despite the challenges with an inconsistent taxi driver to take them to school, most of the children are still attending even though they now have to take a tro-tro into town. This isn't the ideal situation as the tro-tro doesn't take them directly to school, but rather drops them at an intersection about a half mile away...however, we are simply glad to see that they are finding ways around these challenges. We were so glad to have them come visit us this morning though and it really was a lot of fun to spend the time reviewing with them and singing the songs they'd learned from us before. Barikisu demonstrated for the other kids all the hand motions for the "Hand-Washing Song" while Mamuna was very proud of her rendition of "Head and Shoulders".

Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend very much time with the women as some heavy rain put a damper (quite literally) on our class. Amina had just finished sharing with the group her review of the talk we gave last week on burns and we were settling in to review our letters when we found ourselves in a heavy downpour with just enough wind to make it impossible to hear each other well...especially when there are babies and kids to add to the mix. (These women inspire me, by the way.. I had a hard enough time being able to pay attention in college when it was just managing myself and perhaps a noisy student sitting near me. These ladies are trying to concentrate and learn, even while having young children and infants coming up to them for this or that, needing to breastfeed, etc...) So, we decided to save our literacy section for next week and closed the class for the day so people could get back to their homes and avoid catching a cold.

We hope that the weather and other forces will work in our favor for nextweek's session!

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