Focolore After School

Sharon writes:

Focolore is an after school program for orphans and other disadvantaged Tanzanian children. It is run by a group of mostly women out of a nearby Catholic Church. We went for the first time a week ago. We met with the volunteer teachers and then divided into two groups. Annica, Tobie, and I went with the younger kids and Carrie and Caleb went with the older kids. We really didn't have a clue what we were doing with the younger kids and only one of the two teachers spoke English to where I could understand what she was saying. So we just winged it. Annica had a deck of UNO cards and worked on colors and numbers with her group. I had about 7 little boys age 7-9.

They had a workbook that was in Swahili but had pictures so I just started pointing out what the pictures were in English. I didn't always get it right. Like when I thought the picture was of a shirt it turned out to be the word "dirty" because it had a stain on it and I'm pointing to a kids shirt and saying is this a shirt (dirty)? I was so embarrased and felt so bad for the little boy. It haunted me all week. I knew I needed a plan. We went again yesterday. I had gathered foods from our kitchen, tomato, potato, rice, sugar, flour, etc. and made flashcards in English. I wrote the word in Swahili on the back just in case they didn't understand me. The kids seemed very happy to have us come back and as soon as I got out of the car a very little boy grabed my basket in one hand and my hand in the other and we walked together to the classroom. Our small groups were expanded to one large group and Annica and I passed out the foods to the children. Then I would hold up a flash card and the child with that food would hold it up and we would all say the word in English several times. Pretty soon we were making up new ways to get them to identify the foods in English.

We drew pictures on the blackboard and wrote the name of the picture in English. Some of the kids came to the board, drew a simple picture and wrote the word in English. With twenty minutes left of our 2 hour class I wasn't sure what to do so I said, "Can you sing me a song?" Last week we had sung "Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes" and the Tanzanians love to sing!

They sang for 20 minutes and would have gone on longer if we didn't have to leave. I can't wait until next week. My face was so tired from grinning ear to ear. The children made me so happy!