school has been amazing lately. it is nothing like i ever imagined and i am loving seeing it transform. our center kids have not been showing up as they are supposed to. we continue to have class and have just opened the doors to anyone and everyone. henrique is ushering in all sorts. yesterday and today we had a little boy who came in and quietly sat in the back and joined us. he lives in the nearby village. he doesn’t wear shoes. all the other boys were being shy and refusing to answer. so we asked the tiny barefoot boy in the back. he stood up, came to the front, took the chalk and wrote the answer on the board. today he told me he was 12 years old. he looks about 6. he has large straight teeth. today he sat uncomfortably close to me as i was doing the lesson with him. mozambicans are close sitters. they don’t mind touching. i like personal space. you don’t get it here. he is adorable but there is something about his face that frightens me. not the big teeth. something that just tells me his life is hard. henrique came too and jamal and sergio and augusto and the boy whose name i can never remember. we did more one on one instruction today, now that i have help! i am learning more about what they know and what they don’t. the tiny boy with the big teeth absorbs it all like a sponge and neatly writes down everything and wants everything translated. he would devour a proper dictionary. especially a picture one. he is so intrigued and i can tell he wants to learn. he gets it that english is survival here. after an hour and a half of pretty intense conversation and conjugation, we danced. the boys lined up and didn’t miss a beat from the song they had learned last week. rena the visitor has them doing Tacky Ann’s in the Lindy Hop to the Jackson 5’s Rockin’ Robin. it is one of the most adorable things i have ever seen. today henrique changed shoes. he had little multicolored loafers in his bag and changed out of his flip flops into his dancing shoes. be still my heart.
this afternoon i had benjamin and berta. benjamin is a boy genius and preaches in church and plays keys. berta is tall and thin and beautiful and loves to study. she goes to school in town. she is very bright. she is shy to speak english but she is a whiz at her own language. today she showed me how to conjugate several irregular portuguese verbs in 3 tenses. i am going to start reversing it on her and showing her the english to all the portuguese that she will teach me. today after class we walked to the beach to go for a swim but stopped for papaya and ice cream and the next thing we knew the sun was setting. now i am home and exhausted and about to go sit under my net to escape the insects that are swarming around me. i made a quick dinner of couscous and tomatoes and have already had my “tub bath”. we don’t have CNN or reality TV or any TV, so i usually look forward to coming home to my latest paperback. or e-book. they days are long and exhausting and it has been hot lately. a good book is all the stimulation i can take.
rena the visitor has invited me out to dinner tomorrow night. this is one of the pleasures of living here, meeting the people from around the world who come here to volunteer. iris accepts visitors for up to 3 weeks. large teams from churches, youth groups, businesses, individuals, couples and families come from all over the place. i like meeting new people and hearing their stories. rena is from england, a dancer and at one time did an internship in Atlanta! every time she says it she does so with a Southern accent and i take no offense.
it looks like i may be reading by headlamp tonight. the power keeps going on and off. more soon...
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