After the weekend break, the projects started back up this week. I’m really enjoying it. I think the kids are getting more used to me. There is a girl at the project in the slums who I want to take back to London with me! She’s 15 and so bright! She has so much potential, and she’s just lovely! The children have requested that I bring in photos of my family in tomorrow, and chocolate for them! One of the girls told me “You’re really nice teacher!” and “You’re a good teacher, I always understand when you teach me”. So cute! I found out on Monday that they have 1,500 houses in the slum here and only 4 outside toilets which they all share. I really can’t imagine having to live like that.
At the orphanage, the scary nun was around again but with a stick this time! She started hitting one of the girls with the stick because she’s 11 and can’t read and telling me that I need to teach her to read! She gave the girl a book to read but she couldn’t read any of the words. I tried giving her really simple words but she still couldn’t read it. I spent the whole of my afternoon there with her going through letters and sounds and simple words. It was pretty frustrating. I left her with some words to learn for the next day. I went in today and when I saw her, I asked her if she had learnt the words and she said yes miss! And started reading them to me. She was so proud of herself! I told her well done that’s fantastic! It was so nice to see a little bit of progress. I spent the whole of today’s session with her again. I really want to be able to spend as much time helping her as I can before I leave. There are 98 children at the orphanage and only 3 nuns so its hard for the children to get individual attention if they’re struggling and I don’t understand how hitting the children because they can’t do the work helps.