50 Cent
Hey everyone, it's Ellie. Today was a fairly productive day at Fountain of Hope. We started the morning off with a tranquil session, helped by Stephen and Joe Tembo. All of the kids today were non-english speakers, which coincided well with our newly translated notecards, courtesy of Kenny Hau. Each notecard listed those 4 rules that I mentioned earlier, but in either Bemba or Nyanja. When we encountered problems with the kids erasing activities, or improperly shutting down the computer, we simply asked, "Bemba or Nyanja," and pointed to the corresponding rule.
At one point I gave Moses my flash drive from home, and let him play around on it. One of our "teachers", he was able to find the USB link and see the contents of my flash drive without our help. He opened a number of files, one of which was a (slightly absurd) picture of Field School Librarian and Teacher, David Bonner enthusiastically reading a copy of Field News, a photo that was stored on my flash drive for use on an old French project. Moses was extremely amused, calling over Henry and asking, "who is this?". He saved it to Lubuto 9, the laptop he was using, and the picture will forever live on at Fountain of Hope.
As the hours progressed, a number of kids decided that they wanted to use the already occupied computers. No matter how much we stressed that all the computers were being used, and to come back tomorrow, they persisted. We absurdly found the Arts Center under seige of small children, and were forced to literally barricade the door with our bodies. Obviously this made it difficult to help the kids, who sat at their laptops raising their hands and watching us struggle. Some of the kids ripped apart the already broken shutters, until they became bored and thankfully directed their attention elsewhere. Their enthusiasm is encouraging!
Yesterday, while Henry played basketball with the kids, I sat and talked with a different group. Sitting on the ground, they asked me some questions and shared a few details of their lives. Frank, the strongest english speaker in the group, told me that he thinks that his Mom is in South Africa, his dad is in Kenya, and his grandmother is in Spain. He would like to find them, but he isn't sure of their exact location, and doesn't know their addresses. Another young boy told me that his parents live in the mountains of New Zealand, and that he is 20 years old. Such a joker. We talked about Kwacha vs. USD, bicycles, D.C., and Obama. The excitement on the latter is still very fresh here, and the kids all wanted to know, "In person, is he black? Is he colored? Really?".
Tomorrow (our last day at Fountain of Hope), we're planning on getting together with our small group of teachers, and making sure that they're fully prepared to handle the XOs. We'll try to round up Moses, Joe, Joseph, Stephen, and Benson and are considering asking them to bring along one other person who they'd like to teach. This way we can smoothly make the transition, and see how they handle themselves in their new positions, in addition to letting them further explore the machines. Henry and I have complete faith in them, and expect that they may do a better job than we ever could.
And now I leave you with a piece of authentic XO artwork:
"50 Cent" - by Clement
