Day 8: Just Another Day in Barra Village

Hello friends and family! We are enjoying our time in Barra Village and are sad to have to say goodbye so soon. The past two days have been a whirlwind of emotions, chaos, and lots and lots of sweat! The children of Sajuka are so happy we are hear that they hardly know how to contain themselves. They have much more energy than we anticipated and the language barriers with the younger children has presented a few problems.

The child literacy team has been working hard with all the students, and they have made an honest effort to providing the teachers of Sajuka with the knowledge and supplies they need to continue on after we leave. For the second day in a row, two teachers for the nursery school children have not been able to come to classes, and so the child literacy team was put in charge of 42 children who dont speak english! The adult literacy team has been working hard with the women at the craft center to learn hw to read and write, a skill they were not fortunate enough to learn as children. They also got to help out when the women were tye-dyeing the crafts we bought from them, which include scarves, dresses, shirts and skirts. Needless to say it has been an exhausting few days. With temperatures reaching into the 100's, sudents have been crashing right after dinner,which is usually around 9:00.

The nurses station has been working around the clock to reach ther mission of seeing every singleone of the 300 students at Sajuka school. They have been faced with some very taxing situations, including a boy who had an open leg wound he got from a broken bottle, and a little girl with a mysterious cyst under her tongue that they have not been able to yet identify. They are training Fatou, a local woman and librarian at the school, to run the nurses station after we leave, and to hopefully cut the number of infections at the school.

We are sad to say that we only have 1 day left in Barra Village before we head back to Senegal and get ready to ead home Friday morning. We are fully anticipating that there will be many tears shed tommorrowwhen we have to say goodbye to the children, and when they realize that we will not be back the next morning. It's truly heartbreaking to leave these kids behind, but we will also be leaving our hearts behind wth them as well, and we will never forget the children of Sajuka Primary School.

P.S. Our plane gets to Logan Airport at 8:53 friday night, and the shuttle will be back to Bay Path somewhere between 11:30 and 12 midnight. See you all then!