Progress!

Today, progress was made! Like yesterday, today we broke into three smaller groups to work on English skills. I had the middle group, those who knew the alphabet in order (the abc song) but didn't know the letters by themselves. When we finished lessons for the day yesterday, the kids had the capital letters down cold. I was so amazed at how quickly they caught on when they had more individualize attention (though I shouldn't really be surprised because this is similar to the work I do in Memphis). I was rather afraid that I was going to get there today and have a lot of what they learned yesterday forgotten. But that was not the case, thank goodness! We breezed through our review and made it to the lowercase letters which they got really quickly so we ended up playing some matching games. They were so proud of themselves too. After each time they would match two letters together (example- p kubwah and p ndogo) and I would say ndyo (yes) or mbezi (good) they would get a little smile and I swear they would stick their chest out a little bit. It was so funny and cute and makes all the bad so so worth it. Whats really cute is that most of the kids I'm working with are boys and they are tough little men outside of the orphanage, always acting tough in front of the other neighborhood kids, but once they are inside the walls of the orphanage all they want to do is sit on my lap or play with my hair or talk to me (albeit in Swahili). It is fantastic.

Oh, also, the Malaika donor family came today for a visit. They are an older couple from the Netherlands. It was great to talk with them and see what motivates them to give money to an orphanage so far away. They also seemed really interested in what I think about Malaika and my experiences at the orphanage and in Dar. When I took the kids out to play for the afternoon, the family and Amita (the orphanage mom) were talking about building a new building for Malaika which is so desperately needed! It was an exciting day.

Like I wrote in the last post, I have been feeling really lonely and not really part of the group of friends forming at the hostel. But, last night I got home from work late and was greeted by everyone wondering where I was and asking me how my day was and saying they wanted to take me out to celebrate my birthday. So we went to a little bar (a big porch with a thatched covering and beer) to have a few drinks and get to know each other. It was a lot of fun and super memorable.


So things are on the upswing. I'm beginning to feel a little more comfortable and a little bit more like I can do this. Thank you everyone for your kind words, I really appreciate them. :)

Until next time,

Namaste!