Today a “John” showed up on my porch and asked if I had a globe. I spoke to him for a few minutes trying to make sure of what he meants, and then went inside to get our inflatable globe.
John said that he had studied globes in school today and learned about latitude and longitude and wanted to see them. The children are studying geography in this seventh grade classroom (if you can call it a classroom) with no globe or map, in fact there is none to be found in the entire school.
Reminds me of the kids in a local secondary school (not Christ School) that study chemistry not by using Bunsen burners but by reading about them and looking at pictures of them in a book.
This seventh grade kid, who was quite fascinated by my globe, could not name or find his continent and seemed unsure about the name of his country. Perhaps it was just a language problem. He kept repeating over and over again the terms “latitude” and “longitude”, and running his fingers over the lines.
This boy, who loves to learn, has the misfortune to live as an orphan in a country of poverty. We can hope and pray that he will continue to have chances to grow.
And this is why we are here, at Christ School, reaching out to 300 students; so bright, so talented and yet so stunted by lack of nutrition, medicine, access to reasonable education. Yet they have made it this far and now we nurture them through academics and sports and friendships. We hope to love them forward to a better future - all the while meeting their physical needs. It’s a big job that could make a really big difference in the massively big problem that is life in Africa.