Sawubona!

I am going to upload pictures today! lets see how long they take.

Tuesday I started at preschool, and let me tell you now, health and safety wouldn't let the building be licensed let alone used as a pre school!!! the children who attend do not have to pay as the church pay for the employees wage. the children come from poor rural families and are aged between 2-6.all the children walk there and go home by themselves, bear in mind the road is 120 kph speed limit and similar to the a127! note the difference between the UK and Swaziland. I was shocked but not completely surprised.

Wednesday was preschool too, and the kids kept trying to touch my hair and my skin! don't think they had seen blonde hair before.

Thursday and Friday I am in home school. there are two classes, one is a younger class the other is older, yet there are only 2 children in each class. On Thursday we went on our first school trip to the Ngwenya Glass factory with the two younger boys. They absolutely loved it! we learnt all about recycling, and had a look around the factory. The boys then spent ages playing on the outdoor play equipment.

Thursday afternoon, I went into the community where Jane and Jude the two nurses on the farm had set up a clinic. We just spent time reading bible stories to the children, playing games and singing songs. some of the children that come are incredibly ill. A lot of them are no more than 2 or 3 and have rotting teeth. A lot of illness here seems to be the result of poverty.

Friday I was in home school again, this time teaching the older class. we start the day with a memory verse and a spelling test. following this, we then have maths. I taught subtraction and division today! The flash cards were too easy, and the children aren't being challenged so I decided to design different questions.

Children here aren't taught to question. they tend to accept rather than analyse and challenge. school should be interesting,and when you aren't challenged you switch off.so i made them think! the basic maths skills in Swaziland is poor though. after maths is break time,so the children got changed for p.e. the boy in the older class has HIV so you have to be careful with how much exercise he can do.so trying to put together a p.e class for 2 students was interesting!

I really am having such a great time. Another girl arrived on Friday who actually knows Ian and Lisa when they were in Teen Challenge as she went through the programme at the same time. All the volunteers are older than me by at least 10 years.

Keep Fit is going well! The girls are now willingly running relays and doing sit ups! All of them are doing squat holds, whether they do it for the full 2 mins is another thing...

love love