Week 1 20/02/08

Greeting from Santa Ana El Salvador

We are both settled in and hard at work, Angela has fourteen classes each week starting at 7.20am Bells, Bugles, Alarms, go off at 5.30 am, if you leave getting up for another hour the water supply disappears.

The computer room has 41 computers starts at 7.30am that’s thirty classes over the week, five sessions of computer home work 6pm till 8pm making 36 in total.

Teaching computer programs is only a small part of what I have been asked to do,

The children have decided that I’m not here to teach them English but they are here to teach me Spanish, not sure who will win.

The teacher uses a Spanish version of Encarta which he uses to teach Maths, Geography, and History etc, (all in Spanish) nobody speaks very much English except the principal but every body wants to try what bit of English they know on you.

The area we are in is very picturesque, mountains and volcanoes on all sides most of them active, we are surrounded by very poor villages..

Every body is very pleasant and helpful, most of our children are from one parent families or orphans, many have been sent here to escape the hundreds of very violent gangs that exist in the cities, our gangs are tame compared to what they have here From what I’ve seen, Don Bosco is doing a wonderful job by giving the children a trade so they can earn money when they leave us.

Till next time. Till next time.

Adios

Leo

Week 2 27/02/08

Buenos dias

Greeting from

Santa Ana, El Salvador.

I should have taken Spanish lesson before coming here, at least the computer screen layout for word and Excel are the same in Spanish and English, it was much easier on Thursday and Friday when I had 12 classes of 40 seven to ten year olds, with the help of \Encarta maths program I coped reasonably well.

To help them learn English we are installing Encarta 2007 in English, as always, it amazes me how these third world countries manage to get hold of the latest computer programmes complete with encryption keys.

Today Sunday is our day of rest so of we took 20 of the students to a lake in the middle of a volcano about 10 miles away, it must have been quite a blast when it went off, I image it would have been similar in size to Krakatau. The outer rim of the crater is about 20 miles in circumference with a 1000ft crater wall all round, the lake in the centre is about 2 miles across. Our boys where able to have a great time rowing on the lake for about four hours so, with packed lunches and terrific scenery they had a great time.

Round the edge of the lake tiny villages have sprung up with small restaurants catering for the local people at weekends, very few tourists come here probably because of the civil war and its reputation for the violence associated with it.

We feel very safe travelling about but most locals are still very wary, all houses have steel doors and iron grills. The shops and all government building have armed guards outside, even our school has armed guards and a twelve ft high steel gate, and barbed wire around the perimeter. At least it keeps Angela in.

Till next time.

Adios

Leo

Week 3 2/03/08

Buenos dias

Greeting from

Santa Ana, El Salvador

The Daily life of our students begins at 5 pm, wash and shower in cold water, then breakfast. Every child has his own plate and mug, after each meal they clean their own utensils under one of the taps around the grounds, then its general cleaning.

All the students are assigned an area which they must keep clean, at around 6 pm hundreds of children can be seen sweeping and cleaning different areas of the school grounds. The morning assembly starts at 7 20 pm.

On Monday mornings we sing the national anthem, quite a long one and not very tuneful, (during the mornings they are taught general academic subjects)

In the computer room where I work we the morning is divided into 6 teaching periods from 7.20pm to 12 pm, between each period 2 pupils have to sweep and mop the floor.

At the first lesson on Monday all the children clean and polish their own computer and surrounding area. If any of you are wondering how I can teach and communicate with the students it's quite simple I have a program on my computers I ask a question in English it translates it to Spanish, they reply in Spanish and I translate it back into English. This works in all countries.

The computer teacher here is Mr Charles he is one of most versatile computer teachers I have ever met and with the limited resources he has, he does a brilliant job and I have learned a lot from him.

The afternoon sessions varies from what we teach in English schools,

The Don Bosco Philosophy is to fully occupy young people by education, and recreational activities, teach them a trade so that they can earn a living, and avoid getting into trouble with the authorities, or join the street gangs.

All the Don Bosco colleges tailor what they teach, to the needs of the locality.

In Santa Ana they teach Woodworking, Auto Electrics, Car Mechanics, Welding and Electronics, They also teach designing and repairing circuit boards for computers and electrical goods, There is a very large machine shop, not quite up to CNC machines standard, but when the money is available they will do it.

In other counties we have worked in, they have taught Agriculture, Animal health, Bricklaying and concrete shuttering, in Ghana the boys built all the school accommodation and class rooms, and then went in to the villages to build homes for the local people, the girls are generally taught to be secretaries, all have the chance to be taught what they want.

In Philippines they mainly became welders or joiners as there was great demand for them to work in the ship yards.

When possible each trade becomes self financing.

The bright students go on to secondary school, and the very bright ones can go to University, if they can get a sponsor, at the moment we have seven students who have been given sponsorship and they are transported to the university each day.

Our last session of the day is 6 till 8pm it’s homework time for the boys, I generally help with computer home work.

What is not generally not known in the UK is that Don Bosco -Salesians community is the largest Voluntary International Teaching organisation in the world that is dedicated to not only teaching but housing feeding & protecting street children, orphans, young people with a gang culture, or drug problems, just generally any very poor child who needs help

From what Angela and I have seen in the many counties we have worked in, 98% of the time it works.

Don Bosco are in 132 countries the latest one being Mongolia where they have been asked to set up a Technical Training college with the same Christen moral training. In fact they are in many Communist, Buddhist and moderate Muslim countries.

Till next time.

Adios

Leo

Week 4 9/03/08

Buenos dias

Greeting from

Santa Ana, El Salvador

This Sunday we went to the Volcano again with 10 of the boys this time we went to the far side of the lake, quite an ordeal making our way down through the jungle on the very steep sides of the crater which has a very dense covering all the way round with huge boulders that have been thrown out when it last exploded.

The boys quite enjoy our company and it’s one way to get to know them better I enjoyed canoeing and swimming with them even though the water was quite cold.

I’m typing this between lessons we have just had an incident where one of the boys who can be quite violent, stabbed a boy right through the arm with a Biro just missing his artery so life here is not without its little incidents.

As an exercise I have asked each class to write their own autobiography which I will translate and upload to my web site, reading some of their letters makes you realise how lucky we are in the west, many have no parents or only one, with no state benefits it must be very difficult for grandmothers and single parents to bring their children up.

This afternoon I took the opportunity to walk around where many of our boys and girls live. Adjoining the technical training collage is a large tract of land that Don Bosco used for growing corn, two years ago a volcano quite near here exploded many had to flee the area, our sports hall became their home for a few months eventually they moved on to the corn field and set up a camp together with many other displaced people, now its just a large shanty town. 50% of the houses are built of corrugated steel sheets the rest blue plastic sheeting donated by one of the aid agency’s no running water, no electric, and no proper toilet facilities. How they will ever get out of situations like this I don't know other than their children becoming educated and getting decent jobs

One of the houses has a well and the owner appears to sell the water to his neighbours, others go to a tap a quarter of a mile away, you see people wheeling barrows with plastic drums full of water back and forth all day it will be very unpleasant when the rainy season comes with just mud floors and no hard surfaced roads

In two weeks time we have a 10 day break and the school closes down so we will have to find somewhere to go. At the moment we are hoping to go to Panama as it's not to far away.

Till next time.

Adios

Leo