Home Visit

Last Friday we had a home visit of another of our female students. When I say "we" I mean Monika, Ima, Herman (also known as "Rasta"), and I. Ima and Herman are translators at our school and Herman is one of my Swahili teachers. We always go with translators because, despite the classes, most of the students still have trouble speaking English!! This student is 43 years old and has 8 children; the oldest is 23 and the youngest is 3! The 3-year old, Glory, had a broken arm, but that didn't stop her from dancing to the music that was playing on the TV and running around outside. (By the way, it seems that everyone here who has a TV always has it turned on, especially when visitors come! Sometimes, it's so loud we can hardly hear ourselves talk!). Glory was truly beautiful. The eldest child, John, stayed with us during the visit. He goes to university, where he studies human resources. He spoke very good English and you could tell from his behavior and from that of all of the children that the family was a happy one and very united.  Our student never had the chance to go to secondary school but heard about our school and is now a student. We met at least 5 of the kids when we were at the house, as well as the husband, who is a policeman (many of our students are married to policemen since there is police housing in the area and former students spread the word to their neighbors about the Give A Heart To Africa school). The husband said he was so happy that his wife now had the opportunity to go to school. It was great to hear him say that. John also told his mom how proud he was of her. His mom started to cry when we asked her if she likes school. She was so grateful to have the opportunity to go to school, finally. I almost started crying myself! Whenever we do a home visit we bring something with us. This time we brought clothing for the youngest child (from the donations from my office in Madrid -- gracias!), plus some sugar and rice. The student always considers the visit as a big honor and, consequently, there is always a lot of food on the table. This time was no exception, and I was able to eat fish for the first time since I arrived. We also had freshly roasted peanuts, rice, veggies (not sure what type), and watermelon and bananas for dessert.