Day 17 - On Confidence

Sophie and Emit

Monday, March 28 – Day 17

My new room – I moved in with Sophie, Niki, and Sarah before the weekend in advance of Marilyn and Claire’s arrival – is playing a game called Chat Pack, which is basically a cross between Questions and Cabin Chat. [Note from the future: I don’t expect you to have heard of either of these, but they’re both wonderful.] Fun, yo.

I helped the little ones get ready for school this morning as usual, then walked Godwyn to school and stood with WoF kids and other volunteers until the bus arrived. I enjoyed feeding Godwyn his porridge with Enfasure before school.

In the afternoon, I helped Rosemary with her multiplication tables (0x1 through 5x10) for maths homework [note from the future: see day 16 photo]. She made good progress in apparent comprehension, but was hindered by a struggle to compute basic sums (e.g., 8+2 or 6+3). The level at which these kids attempt (and often succeed) to move forward in education is sometimes staggering.

I spent later afternoon time observing face painting of the children. Sophie painted my face, giving me bright red “lipstick” to match her own. We took a full-group picture with all the kids, which made me very happy. A highlight of the afternoon was Kwame Adu filming Rosemary and I as I worked with her on her multiplication. I have a plan for an awesome multimedia slideshow to share this experience.

I held a very-awake Godwyn for awhile in the evening dark then quizzed George on science (mostly veins vs. arteries and the heart) for his exam tomorrow. He tried hard to focus but doesn’t like science enough as a subject to stay on track all too long.

A recent Chat Pack question: What is the one piece of advice you would want to share with everyone? My advice right now would be to have confidence in yourself. If you self-accept rather than self-criticize and believe that you can do anything, then you can do anything. That’s how we got here to Ghana – belief that we could make it.