The second week of Literacy classes went well, despite a slow start because of rain. The class room under-a-tree doesn’t leave much room for teaching when it rains! However, the Lord is faithful and even though it rained every day and every night since the beginning of the week, it stopped every afternoon (except one) and we were able to continue with the teaching. Thank you, Lord!
Our classroom is somewhat rustic, built by the students and leaders themselves. It is right on the yard of one of the leaders, and therefore they made the “walls” from palm leaves to keep curious passersby from disrupting the class.
Abar, teacher in training, being instructed by our first qualified Mwinika teacher, Rasu. Rasu took off a year or so from school to help us develop the Literacy materials and to get trained, but now he must go back next week to finish 12th grade this year- about the equivalent of a bachelors degree in this country! His big dream is to go to a Teacher’s College to be trained as a qualified teacher. Very few Mwinika get the opportunity to do be professionally trained and we hope that we can help him make this dream come true.
The idea is for us to train local teachers so that the Literacy work can spread and as many Mwinika as possible can have the opportunity to learn to read and write their mother tongue. The best teachers will in turn be trained to train others… multiplying themselves. My “official” title now is “ko-oritinadora” (coordinator). Here you can see a glimpse of the Teacher’s Manual that we developed in eMwinika for the teaching. Literacy is the first step towards reading and understanding the Word of God.
Abar is still very nervous – he says his heart is running and his legs are shacking when he stands in front of the class! In the background the hostess and her daughter busy plaiting hair. 🙂
We have 8 students for this Literacy class – the limit with only one teacher in training to help. One student was absent here. Students find it hard to set aside their other responsibilities to come to class daily. Pray for their commitment and perseverance!
One of the students wanted to take a turn to learn to take a photo! 🙂 So, here are four students and I posing for the photo. Come out well, don’t you think? Especially for someone who held a camera for the first time ever only to take this photo! (Ok, so this was not his first try that day. Heads were chopped off and photos were blurry at first, but this one came out well!)