Hamisi

One of the great things about being here long term is that you get to see the progress of individual kids. When I met Standard 5 in January, Hamisi was the quiet, nervous kid who sat in the back of the class and read his Kiswahili Bible during lunchtime. He jumped if I spoke to him and the other kids laughed when I asked him to read aloud, causing him to pretend not to hear me and tie his shoelace or start writing. He had quite poor English and was the only one in the class who went for one to one reading, making him a target for the kids to poke fun of.
When we drew up our classroom rules we agreed that laughing at people was against the rule to be kind to eachother and from then on, anyone who made fun of Hamisi (or anyone else) was sent out of the classroom. I started asking him to read sections I knew he could manage without difficulty and got him to read a line or 2 more each time. Two of the older boys, Joseph Reuben and Fikiri, took Hamisi under their wing and began to threaten anyone who mocked him. He gradually grew less afraid of reading in class and one day, about a month ago, I asked for volunteers to come up and do a guessing exercise in English-and Hamisi raised his hand! It was the first time he ever volunteered for anything, I was so chuffed. Since then he's been coming on more and more, reading constantly in his spare time and asking if he doesn't understand something.

The best moment was last week when I got the kids to pretend to be news readers. They were in teams of 3-news, sports and weather-and each kid had to write a report and read it at a desk in front of the class. Two kids were too shy and when Hamisi's team came up I was afraid he would be too, I started mentally berating myself for putting him on the spot.
He sat down, looked at his notes, then calmly set them on the desk, looked around the room and said in a clear, confident voice: "Welcome to KTC News. I am Hamisi. Weather tomorrow will from 3pm to 6.30 be sunny, then wind from 12 to 4am. After that, rain, then again sunny. Thank you."
The room went silent. One kid whispered something incredulously in Swahili and I caught the word "HAMISI?!" Then in a spectacularly cheesy Disney movie moment, the kids all started clapping spontaneously as Hamisi beamed and took his seat. I was grinning like an idiot, I was so proud of him.

If anyone reading this used to teach Hamisi, thank you for your hard work and for not giving up. You guys put in the ground work and now I'm getting to see the results. I hope that the next volunteer Standard 5 gets is able to see even more progress, for him and all the kids. As westerners we come to expect instant results but thats not what Olives is about. It's the gradual changes that will last, and if we don't get to see them happen while we're here it doesn't mean we've achieved nothing, only that the next volunteer will benefit from and hopefully build upon our hard work.

Hamisi