Challenging day turned into a blessing

I just want to say that right now as I am sitting at the internet cafe, I have a perfect view of Mt. Meru right in front of me. It is so big and beautiful, absolutely breathtaking. I have not seen a glimpse of Kili yet because it is right behind Meru but they said on some days when it is clear out you can. Next time I come I will bring my camera and upload a picture of Meru. It is the second tallest mountain in Tanzania and in all of Africa it is the third tallest. I am so blessed to be surrounded by so much beauty. But even with the beauty, there is so much poverty.

We were driving to the bank today and in town there are families who line up tents on the side of the road underneath the trees and they live there. Their tents are a piece of cloth or dried leaves held up by either mud or four sticks in each corner. Most of them have gardens and they sell their goods right there where they sleep. I don't think after three months that I will even be use to this sight. I am blessed. We are all greatly blessed!

So today was my third day at the school and I am not going to sugar coat it, it was horrible for the most part. The children were wired up and fighting/not listening to anything we were telling them. One little girl who is four has an older sister who is on vacation from school this week so she is at the school in out classroom. She was mocking every command we would give and deliberately do the opposite of everything we said. She would also instigate fights. By 10 AM I was so frustrated and just wanted to quit for the day (after two hours).

But during "tea time," I was able to have time to check out the class binder. In this binder is a photo of each of my children and their backgrounds. When I have more time to write on here I will tell you about some of our children, but today I will tell you about Samwely, or Sam. Samwely is the child in the class that smiles the brightest and hugest smiles you could ever imagine. It is beyond beautiful, even with the rotting teeth. Everyone of my kids have rotting teeth. Anyway, I had noticed the last two days that he didn't seem to always follow commands even though he was such a good helper at other times and that he was always clapping and giving me a thumbs up sign when he did something right to receive praise and recognition for his act.

We didn't really receive any background or learning accomplishments of our children so went into the classrooms rather blindly. All of the kids are special needs and they do not understand Swahili most of the time, let alone try to teach them English. So I just assumed Samwely was not understanding me or listening to me when I would give him a command in Swahili. I learned today from the binder that Samwely is deaf. He wasn't ignoring the rules, he just couldn't hear me. So after "tea time" I grabbed a puzzle with the ABC's and some flashcards of numbers and I took him one on one to see how much he had previously been taught or picked up. He is so bright! As soon as I pointed to the "A" and made the sign for it he went directly on to B and then C and then D. The rest of them he could not do without me showing him but once I did his fingers automatically made the shape so I know he is at least a little bit familiar with them. We worked on spelling SAM and made him a sign for his name. We worked on basic commands and also numbers. After the hellish morning I had, this was so uplifting and I finally felt like I was accomplishing something.

For lunch we had the norm, rice, beans and veggies. But yesterday.... we had meat which we were so excited about because it is rare to have here. I ate all of it except for one piece that had a lot of bones in it. After eating we asked her if it was beef and Mama Mary said, "No, goat." BARF. Now, I like goat, I have had it before and it was good. But the thought of me knawing meat off of a goat bone really grossed me out and my stomach was upset for the rest of the day. YUMM.

Tomorrow we are waking up at 9AM to leave for a four day safari! We are going through the organization so it is so incredibly cheap. Well I have to run to a meeting about the trip so I will hopefully have lots of pictures and stories to report back soon!! <3