Smiles and Clean Hands

This was our first full week of doing both the literacy classes and being at the school every day and it’s by God’s grace that I’m not exhausted. I love the children at the school! I love them more each day. On Thursday we accompanied them on the little, yellow school bus for the full route home to see where each of them lived. As I saw their smiles and eager pats on our legs to show us where they lived, as they tried to pronounce my name (I end up as Madam Sharon most of the time) and as a couple of the girls twisted my loose hair in African style, both my heart and face couldn’t erase their smiles. I love when they come running to greet us in the mornings, say their cute, “Good morning, Madam,” and fight to stand next to us to hold our hands during circle time in the morning. I love when I find them looking at me during class and I can give them a smile, or when they come up to show me their work after every other letter so I can praise them and encourage them. These kids are only 5 years old and although getting them to learn the sounds of the alphabet, or simple words or colours is a plus, encouraging them in their work and creativity and helping them to establish who they are, in a Christ-like manner (not lashing out at everyone in a 70 kilometre radius when they don’t get what they want when they want it) is really my primary concern. I love when some of the kids who take a longer time to finish their work want me to stay beside them and watch them as they draw the number three, or have me hold their hand and draw a ball with their hand for them to copy on their own.

Things with teaching the kids is going decently well for all of us. It’s hard to get them all to pay attention and to not hit each other and not talk all the time, but I think some of what I’ve tried to teach them is getting through to them and sticking in their little brains. Their favourite part of the Language and Literacy classes (as well as mine) is when I read them a Bible story (or two) from “The Beginner’s Bible”. I’m impressed by how much they can remember from those stories (though I know that Sunday school also helps with that).

This morning we washed our clothes for the first time. Karen and I sat with Belinda outside with the big wash basins and scrubbed away all the dirt and sweat from the past couple weeks and Steph hung them on the line. Although Belinda says that most people don’t enjoy doing laundry, the novelty of the experience made the early morning chore not seem so bad. We have a long weekend this weekend (since Monday is the day that they celebrate the first president’s birthday – he was kind of a big deal here) and it’s nice to not have anything that we have to do today. We didn’t have to rush through doing the laundry and we could just enjoy chatting without thinking of lesson plans or what papers we have to write or how much we have to get done in the next little bit. We could just enjoy scrubbing away (and getting our hands cleaner than I think they’ve ever been). They say that Ghanaians don’t really have a sense of time and are more free to do whatever, whenever. We’ve been pretty busy here lately and I haven’t had a chance to really feel that yet, but this morning was a bit of a breather. Who knew laundry could be so therapeutic?