Special for visitors

Wow. I just read all of your comments, and am sitting here at the computer with a big goofy smile on my face. Thank you all so much for your encouragement. Sometimes when you are so far away, you forget your support system back home.

I have received a couple questions by email, and I promise I will try to give as many answers and as much detail as I can over the next two weeks. I only have 15 minutes on the computer at a time, so I'm trying to break it up a bit.

I have gotten the most inquiries about the children and the orphanage. Faraja is in the backyard of a man and his wife who decided the street children needed to be taught. It is a single room with windows so the breeze comes through nicely. There are 25 children right now, between the ages of 3 and 6. Some can't write yet, some know multiplication and division. It is extremely difficult to teach when everyone is at a different skill level.

The children know English by repetition, but don't comprehend it. They can repeat the ABCs endlessly, but don't realize that those letters make sounds. We have, so far, sucessfully taught them "heads shoulders knees and toes", by singing and pointing 10 times each morning. I never want to hear that song again. We try to organize activities and games, but it ends in chaos. They don't care that we are standing in front of the room- they are running out the doors and climbing on the tables. The "teacher", Mr. Massawe, doesn't speak very good English at all, so I ask him questions and he says yes to everything.

On Friday, he took my hand and led me to the "toilet" out back. He pointed and said this is where the students use the toilet. It was an outhouse-looking structure, with no door, and a hole in the middle of the ground. I nodded. Then, he said there was a special toilet for visitors that he forgot to show me, incase I needed to use it. He stepped to another wooden hut, this one with a locked door. He took the key from above the door frame and opened it, and there was the hole in the middle of the floor, exactly the same as the other. I am not quite sure what makes this one the "visitor" toilet, but I know I am going before I leave the house in the morning.