Visiting schools (2)

One day we all went in a taxi out of Kisumu about 12 - 15 miles to visit two schools very close to one another.  Gill had previous connections to one of them through a friend who had donated money for buildings and uniforms, and her home area in the Forest of Dean had connections and exchanges with the other, bigger school.

I think photos will tell the story better than lots of words !

School desks are VERY basic and often seat five children to each desk.  

The desk in the foreground is not the roughest we saw !

Classrooms have a blackboard ... and very little else in the way of equipment.

What can Kenyan children learn from a poster of Postman Pat ??

But the gift Dan brought of two balls was VERY welcome indeed !

Gill helped the teacher to help a child with learning difficulties. 

We felt there was SO much more we could have done in the schools we visited.

Using mud to make letters on the floor as an aid to reading.

New uniforms, paid for by English donors !

(All Gills photos)

Gill, Nigel and I were all teachers, and we felt keenly the frustration of not being able to stay and help the teachers to learn more of techniques for teaching, especially of handicapped children.   As a speech therapist, Gill was able to show one of the teachers a few simple things to help her with children who were deaf and therefore couldn't hear speech to copy.  I would have loved to have the opportunity to take spoken English classes with the younger children, teaching them rhymes and riddles and some of the African traditional tales to enlarge their vocabularies.  Art too, using simple materials found locally, would be good for young children. 

I want to be able to do this as a volunteer later in the year if I can ... and it would be fun to see if the children near the work site still remember  'Four stiff standers, four dilly-danders, two lookers, two crookers and a wig-wag' !!