Friday, July 2, 2010

First Day at Abigail Butscher Primary School





We spent our first morning at the school meeting with the teachers. It was not a normal school day and the kids only came for a few hours to watch the one yearly movie they get to see at school on The Day of the African Child. This is a day set aside by all of Africa to remember the school children killed in the South African schools during the anti-apartheid violence. In order for them to watch the movie a generator and TV need to be rented since there is no electricity at the school.
The teachers showed us the materials they have to teach with. One book is used by the teacher to copy the story on the board. This is the only reading material the students have to learn to read from. They never get to hold a book in their hands to read. We quickly decided to spend time shopping for books to see what we could get them. They also needed uniforms for the children. Too many of the children's families could not afford a uniform. They also shared that they did not have enough pencils, paper, notebooks, and pens for the kids. Luckily, we had pencils, paper, notebooks, crayons, colored pencils, and erasures that we would be giving to the kids and teachers over the next few days.
While we were meeting with the teachers and meeting a lot of the kids, Dr. Ossie Cameron, and Dr. Fedra Whitting were setting up a dental clinic in the school office. They planned on screening all 180 of the children and performing all extractions that needed to be done during our time there. They did accomplish this working ten hour days plus they managed to see a lot of local parents and kids who did not even go to the school. They were amazing!!!!
After spending the day at the school we set off back to town to shop for material for the school uniforms and books for the kids. After stops at many market stalls we found the correct color green fabric and yellow chording for the uniforms. We priced everything out, then set off to find MacMillan Africa. Walking the streets of Freetown was an experience! The crowds were intense because everybody is walking and trying to sell something. At MacMillan Africa we were able to find books for reading levels 1-7. The stories we found were great for the kids. Stories like The Great Paw Paw Tree and The Enormous Yam---they were fun for us to read and we picked out titles that we thought the kids at Abigail Butscher could connect to. We got prices and set back to the hotel to figure out what we could afford to buy with the budget we had. Thanks to a travel grant from Boys' Latin School we had enough money to be able to buy these things for the school.
Back at the hotel we went for a swim in the ocean, which was heavenly!!! We also met back up with the medical team for dinner.
After dinner we decided that we could buy two titles at each of the seven reading levels and 15 copies of each title. This would allow the kids to have a book to share with a classmate. Since the school only went up to grade four, they would have some titles at levels for the kids to move up to over the next year.
Our plan for the next day was to head back to the school and watch the teachers teach, get a feel for what we could do with the teachers and kids during our short time there, then head back to town to buy books and material.

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