Sunday, March 20, 2016

A Great Night And Fun Teaching Experience

Yesterdays meal and meet and greet with my co-workers children turned out wonderful. Even thou I was quite tired going in, being with her family, telling some stories, showing the video and pics from the dump woke me up and it all went very well. During the evening there was a visit from 4 young next door neighbour boys (12 years old? ). So I had a captive audience of 2 adults and 8 children.

After dinner we all sat in front of the TV, I put my USB stick in and we were able to watch video, and pics directly from the dump. I hope the children aged from 6 to 14 were able to learn a few things about how lucky they are in their lives. We all have problems here in Canada but our problems often pale in comparison to the lives of people living in poverty in other parts of the world.

The surprise of the night for me was all the donations. I thought I was living up to a promise I made in September 2015, to tell stories of life at the dump to my co workers children, actually this was a whole new thing. New money, new donations, new promises for a return in the late spring or late fall to do this all again. I will probably go back and do a second round of video/photos and stories with everyone when I return from Thailand

Last nights surprise donations included:
- $150 from the 4 neighbour boys (who I had just met). A very generous thing, and a total surprise to me.
- $300 from my co worker and her family (4 children). It was rather amazing to see young children reach into her/his private wallet (money they had earned doing chores etc) and dig out $25 to give to the children living in a dump half a world away. It brought a tear to my eye to see this.

I also got a bag of donation goods from the family that included.

- young girls dresses, tops, clothes, even a bathing suit.
- small rubber boots, and other shoes.
- hats of many kinds.
- toys, puzzles, dolls.
- child type necklaces and other jewellery.