My friend Alice and I stayed at the Mogra Centre - the home for children that Tushinde has set up - for two weeks during the summer of 2010 (yes this is a shamefully belated blog). Immediately we were made to feel very welcome and all the staff and children were so generous, sharing the little they had.
We spent the majority of our time at the Mogra Centre, helping teach children who were either too little or too poorly to do the long walk to the school. I remember being quite shocked when I first saw the classroom, as it was like a cave with bare cement walls and bits of rubble everywhere. The children sat on old-fashioned benches and shared worn out pencils and battered old textbooks between them. There was one teacher to 30 children of a range of different ages and abilities. A completely different environment to one you would see in any primary school in England. We did a variety of tasks with them; for example one day me and Alice split the class in two and taught the children about the solar system, then another day we gave each child a pack of seeds and went and planted them, for them to try and grow their own crops. I really enjoyed spending time with the children and found that, despite the obvious issues and low standards of equipment and surroundings, after a while you hardly noticed them. All you noticed was what a lovely teacher they have and how keen the children are to learn, and how they love learning almost as much as they love play-time.
After school finished, we played lots of games and sang songs. They all drew pictures, writing ‘I love Grace and Alice’ on all their pictures, and all fought for our attention, jumping on us to hold them and pushing away other children so we could hold only their hands. They clearly yearned for attention and to be loved and this in itself was heartbreaking. Bedtime was a time when it became even more apparent, the completely different lives these children have. There were two year olds running around at nine pm, whilst other children slept on the floor sharing a tiny mattress sodden with urine. Yet without Tushinde, most would not have mattresses at all. We helped establish a teeth cleaning routine (with a very catchy tune we wrote) and then read them stories and sang songs. They loved being stroked to sleep and all gathered around to have stories read to them and asked to be sang to again and again. Sadly Tushinde does not have the staff to be able to do this.
Once the older children came home from school, we also spent some time talking to them. A lot of them really wanted to talk to us about their lives and they were so open about the horrors that they had faced, some almost matter of fact, as if it is an inevitable part of life. Yet this is not the way it should be. It should not be inevitable that a child has to see their parents murdered in front of them, or a little girl has to live on the street pretending to be a boy in order to survive, and that many were raped or abused. At home we are all aware of the struggles many children in Africa face, yet I found that imagining their existence was very different to actually seeing it face to face. At the same time it is evident how strong, determined and hopeful these children still are and this is clearly thanks to Tushinde.
Tushinde helps shape the lives of children whose paths are otherwise pre-determined and has already done this for so many children. For example Monica, the little girl who was living on the streets who disguised herself as a boy in order to avoid being attacked or raped; thanks to Tushinde she is now an A grade student planning to go to law school. When we were there she was reading a book in English (her second language) that I shamefully admit I gave up on the year before as it was too hard!
One particular day, we went to the slums with Megan, to visit the school that Tushinde helps. Seeing the slums was eye opening, the awful conditions that so many people have to live in. Also to see first hand the positive impact Tushinde has had on so many childrens’ education and their health too, by paying for HIV medication or trying to improve their impoverished living arrangements. It was clear to me that Tushinde is trying to help in as many ways as it possibly can.
From my stay, it is evident that Tushinde has already done so much to help change children lives, and that it has so much more potential. Tushinde has done the hard part: it has the passion, the ideas and the right people, it just needs the financial support. And that’s the easy part, and the bit that we all need to help with.
love, Grace
