Volunteering at Linda Community School - Week 1

It has now been a full week of volunteering at Linda Community School. If we said we have loved every minute of it so far, that would be a big, fat. hot and sweaty lie! It has been pretty tough. Both physically and emotionally. The only thing that we would change would be the heat though. It is getting to about 45 degrees Celsius. The school doesn't have any cooling system in place including fans.

We we got to the school on Monday we glad we had worn our walking shoes. The first thing we did was go for a walk to see how some of the children lived. One child lives an hour walk from the school and sleeps in a tiny little mud and straw hut that he has to share with his brother. The hut would be about half the size of a disabled toilet cubicle you would find in a shopping centre. His three sisters share a slightly bigger hut that is also the kitchen. There is no electricity and closest source of water is about a kilometre and a half away at the communal pump. This pump also occasionally breaks so the village is has no real access to water when that happens. The pump was not working for a couple of days this week. When that is the case the school attendance drops dramatically until people are able to access water again.

The school is lucky that it has its own water pump so the children have access to water all day. This pump also provides half of the community with water too.

A lot of the children at the school are orphans who are being cared for by relatives. One child is being cared for by his uncle who is only 21 himself. Not only has he cared for this boy by himself since we was 15 he also has a small farm that is his only source of income. The children only go to school for half a day so that they can work for the other half and help their parents or relatives if they need to. The kids might be put to work on the small farms, collecting firewood to sell or even crushing rock in extreme heat that is sold by the wheelbarrow full for the equivalent of $1.

It sounds as if these kids live a pretty bleak existence but they all come to school with bright smiles and are ready to learn. When asking the kids what they want to be when they grow up their answers are the same as kids in Australia. They want to be pilots, soldiers, teachers, nurses and farmers when they grow up.

For the next couple of weeks the school is a couple of teachers short for various reasons. There are no substitute teachers so we have been given the grade six class to teach. The high light of the day for both them and us would have to be the sport. This week they learned how to kick an Australian Rules footy. There are some kids that there that I imagine talent scouts would take a keen interest in. They seem to be naturals. Today they played T-Ball... Well a very modified rules version. It must have been quite a sight as we gathered a pretty strong crowd of kids and adults from the community. It was great fun. The Wombat Team beat the Platypus Team.

This week did not come with out any dramas though. There was in fact a Malaria scare that involved taking Corrine to the doctors clinic. It turned out to just be a cold which she had tried to tell people but no one was taking any chances and two injections in the backside later. One of them just in case it was very early stages of Malaria and not registering yet and another for the nausea (probably caused by the incredible heat) The trip to the clinic was quite an adventure. We both thought were seeing things when a cat came strolling out of one of the examination rooms into the waiting area and out of the door. There was also a dog just wandering around. It did make us wonder if we were in fact at a veterinary clinic instead of a human one. At least all is good and we do have a bit of a story to tell. Isn't that what traveling is about?

We are off to Botswana for the weekend so we will surely have a tale to tell after that.

See you soon.