240/365

240/365, originally uploaded by britrosewhite.

I'd like to take you on a tour.


Every Tuesday and Thursday we drive down this way to get to Joy Springs.


I snapped these quickly and without much purpose because I didn't want anybody to feel like I was making a spectacle out of them.

Along this way you'll find shops selling fruits and vegetables, chapatis at lunch, mandazis in the morning, and sodas all day long. There is a movie theater that shows movies I've never heard of on a screen that must be on the wall of a building somewhere, there are little kids running around, the smell of burning trash is almost unbearable, there are ashes floating in the air, and in the midst of all of this is the school.


Rose meets us outside. She is the pastor's wife - the founder of the school. Amy, Faustin and I follow her...


We pass homes made from mud and other unknown materials...


We pass the bathrooms on the right. Faustin told us no matter what, do not use them. They are holes that fill up every WEEK. They have to be cleaned out. I'd be willing to go pretty far to help someone but I seriously had to consider - could I go that far? I just...ahh...makes me feel like a bad person. Can't I just hold a baby?

Anyway. Amy and I don't drink a lot on these days.


After a bit of weaving we make it to the entrance of the school.


We can already hear the kids yelling, so we prepare ourselves....


For this!! A hundred sweet faces yelling, "How are you? How are you?" over again. They grab our hands and bombard us almost to the point of exhaustion.

But today the teacher's quickly swept the children back in to their classrooms...


So that we could (boldly) climb the stairs and park ourselves in the office for some tea and our hour-long planning time.

Today I accidentally launched a glass jar full of crayons down those stairs. Me and a hundred eyes watched with horror as the crayons flew all over the place and the jar hit each step before finally shattering on the ground. I ran to the office to put my things down, and by the time I had turned around a girl was handing me all the crayons. I thanked her then rushed outside to clean up the glass. It was already gone. The kids had thrown it away.

It is a mystery to me how classrooms of 40 kids who grew up in the slum of all slums, some orphaned, some with horror stories we can't even imagine, could be the most well-behaved and respectful group of children I've ever witnessed. They go to school from 7:30 AM until 5 PM. They desire to learn. They want to be doctors and ambassadors.

And today Amy and I taught them the meaning of the word "y'all".

Seriously. We're going to be fired.