Monday 8 June

This morning, I had the genuine pleasure of going to Mwandi’s pre-school, to help the teachers and provide a climbing frame for the kids.

Once again, I was amazed how an area that’s so poverty stricken can continue to be so resourceful, and teach important lessons to these kids.

My first duty was to help the teachers prepare the exercise books.

After this, the kids did some counting with teacher. Today, the number was 14, so the teacher counted out 14 pencils onto a chair. Then, the kids were invited to volunteer themselves to also stand up in front of the class and count 14 pencils onto a chair. And each time one of them got it right, the rest of the class had the most endearing little song!

“Well done, well done, such a good girl/boy!
We’re not jealous!
Jealousy is poison!”

Later one, they showed me a few of their other songs, which included

“Good morning! Good morning!
How are you? How are you?
This morning, this morning
Shake hands! Shake hands!”

Then I was invited to show them a song… I wasn’t too sure what to do, and I certainly couldn’t top them with what they’d done so far! So I just got them doing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes as fast as possible. It seemed to go down well!

Next came a colouring in session, where the kids would identify and colour in a number on a page, which was soon followed by lunch time. Then it was an hour of free play, and time for my climbing frame duties to come in! They weren’t like the kids in Jaipur though, they were actually kind enough to let you breathe and that sort of thing, so I was quite happy. I did eventually move to distract them with the okie kokie, and that was great fun! They were all in stitches by the end!

For the afternoon, then were all focusing on their letter of the day which was L

They were all asked to name something that starts with ‘L’, and while many creative suggestions came out, not one thought of Lauren!

While they were doing this, I prepared a few more exercise books, while a very cute little helper explaining each one to me

I also took a flip through to see what else had been learned so far, and was impressed by the lesson in safety!

Finally though, the day drew to a close and it was time for me to say goodbye.

After this, I returned to the Pharmacy to help with the counting of pills.

I would have to say, from what I’ve observed, the issue with HIV in this area no no longer comes from a lack of education, but more the living conditions themselves. It’s much, much harder for a person living with HIV in this area than it is for people back in the UK, and there’s so many additional risk such as Malaria and generally unhealthy living conditions that provide a number of additional complications, which results in that much more medicine and therefore additional costs.

I hope one day soon this disease will be gone.