Let's speak English!
01.11.2011
Dear help2kids readers, this time is Jenna, the American volunteer, in charge of the blog.
After nearly a month of volunteering here in Mbezi Beach I’ve grown accustomed to the more relaxed pace of life here in Tanzania. I am unfazed by power outages, have learned to sit patiently in traffic jams, and even enjoy our sweaty bike ride to and from the orphanage. Life with the kids, though, is anything but boring. From face painting to football games, we try to make every day special.
Last week we started teaching English at our partner school Wamato. We teach the kids of Standard 6, the highest level offered at the school. Our first few classes went very well. It was great to see how excited the kids are about learning English! Now we only teach twice a week, but we’re hoping to expand the program soon. Teaching English in Tanzania is very important because it will offer to the students the possibility of attending Secondary School and having a good job in the future.
You can visit our website for more information about the project: https://www.help2kids.org/orphanage/projects/schoolproject.html.
We’d also like to send a big thank you to former volunteer Emma for donating a notebook and pen to each of the 40 students! The kids were thrilled to receive them. We want to send Emma a deep thank you for her month spent here in Mbezi Beach.
Concerning the Orphanage, the best news this week is that Eli was readmitted to school after been kicked out last week because of bad behavior. We hope he learnt the lesson and from now will behave better. We just hope he can stay out of trouble this time!
Other than that, things have been pretty normal at the orphanage. We spend our days playing with the kids and doing educational group activities. We started one-on-one tutoring with some of the older kids, hoping to improve their math and reading skills. They really love the individual attention, and it’s so fun to get to see their personalities outside of the usual group situations.
We also started something called Friday Funday (or Freshi Friday, depending on whom you ask, haha) where we try to do an extra-special activity with the kids. This week we decorated the covers of the books that the kids are going to write about themselves. They went wild for the stickers!
The usual daily problems are nowadays familiar with anyone…power cuts, water shortages, no communication network, no petrol supply. Sometimes is a little hard to deal with all this issues especially with 21 little children to take care of. We hope one day the thing will be better and everything will go smoother.
Looking forward to another great week at help2kids!
A great thank you to Mattias Stalnacke, a guest of Friendly Gecko, for most of the pictures contained in this blog.
Jenna,
Volunteer help2kids
