So a few days during the week I go with another internation student to tutor at the SOS Childrens Village just outside of Gabarone. This is an orphanage, or which there are 3 in Botswana. The children there range in age from babies to about 20, and after an effort is made to find family members the children remain at the orphanage for their entire childhood, the children aren't adopted.
The children in the kindegarten have a really nice facility on the compound where they attend school, but the other children all commute to local schools. The girls I tutor go to a local high school... so they have a lot of physics, chemistry, calculus.. but it helps me get ready for my GRE's. The girls are really funny, and it's nice to help out and talk with girls that are close to my age group, but from such different backgrounds. We walk through the playground to get to their housing and the little kids always run up yelling "teacher! teacher!".
What I've found interesting are the girls stories of school. In public schools in Botswana it is still customary to hit, pinch, and whip the children. It's awful and really traumatizes the kids. We've seen this at UB where almost no one will volunteer an answer in class because they have been trained for their entire academic lives that if they get it wrong, they will get beaten. It's a really different situation than anything I've encountered before.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment