Diakano Theko

Its been a long time since my last posting. The past month (and a half, give or take) has been....well..... challenging. I struggled with finding motivation and excitement when teaching my literacy classes with one of my schools for several weeks. I felt as if the village was sucking the life out of me. Teacher apathy and ineffectiveness was driving me mad. And, I was having a difficult time creating lesson plans that kept 30-50 children mentally/physically occupied for 1 hour.

(side note: I had absolutely no idea how to teach kids HOW to read. I'm talking about basics of this is an "A" and it sounds like this ---.Its actually a little harder than I was expecting.)

I then went away for a week of training, which was fun because I was able to spend time with friends that I hadn't seen for a long time. However, on my way home from the training, I received a phone call from my host sister. My 16 year old host brother, Diakano, had been
killed. He was stabbed by a 19 year old boy. They were arguing over a girl. Yep....a girl!

So, the past few weeks (since his passing) have been crazy. I'm actually going to save that information for another posting. I don't want this one to be too long.....