Dear Oprah,
     I WAS Valary's sponsor! I was so thrilled to find her and clear up the earlier confusion, not to mention the guilt I had felt watching this precious child's face fill with disappointment when I told her initially that she was not meeting HER Katie English. I was HER Katie English! What a crazy turn of events that not only did I now have a child half way around the world to look after, but more importantly I was there to meet her!! Who gets to spend one-on-one time with the African child they sponsor?? I was about to and I couldn't wait.



Valary and me hanging out in the open air "room" that serves as the school's meeting place for assemblies etc.

      Valary and I got to know each other a little that day. She told me that her mother had died but her father was remarried. He is a teacher at the highschool and so even then when she was only in 5th grade, she was already very focussed on getting good grades so that highschool would be a possibility for her. In Africa, children are not guaranteed a highschool education as they are here in the states.  Instead, they must earn their spot and be accepted into a school. Much of Valary's conversation was about her dreams of getting a good education so that she would someday be able to be a leader in African politics. I was blown away by her drive and focus at such a young age. It mirrored the enthusiasm for education I was seeing every morning as I walked to the preschool and back (it was a mile down the road from the main school). At the beginning of the day, many of the children would show up early because they were so excited to be at school for the day...despite the fact that there were no lights...no running water...not even any screens in the windows to keep the mosquitos out. But to the children, school meant food...a solid roof...and less responsibility than at home - or at least of another sort that didn't include taking care of sick parents, or taking younger siblings to bathe in the lake, or carrying the heavy water buckets from the lake to their "houses". In the afternoons, when school was out, we would literally have to shut the gate while  numerous children hung from it because they didn't want to leave school each day.  I guess I wouldn't really want to go home to a house made of doo doo, straw, and mud either. Oh, Oprah...if we could only get the American children to truly value education in the same way.  If only....

I tried to introduce the concept of organizing children into smaller groups for more appropriately leveled activities and was please with the outcome.

One of the teachers with the dishes she had just washed.