“Don’t Forget Us” – by Charlene

Those were the words spoken to me by a woman named Iris that I met today. I was accompanying Heather on her rounds to the township schools to meet with teachers to promote the orphan’s camps at C4L. We went to 5 different schools but Iris’ school stands out in my mind as we spent the most time there and the situation seemed the most desperate.

Here’s what we saw when we drove up. This can’t be right, I thought, this school is under construction and it doesn’t have a roof. Heather informed me that last August, when the school was brand new, there was a big wind storm which ripped the roof off and it has never been fixed. Because it was never fixed, there is a lot of water damage inside the building and the wiring has been damaged too. This is the view from the office where we met.

In order for us to sit down together, she had to go and “pinch” some chairs from one of the classrooms. Often the overcrowded classes have three children sharing two seats so there is not an extra chair anywhere. Iris told us that the annual budget for their new school is R11,000 or $2,200 Canadian dollars! The school has an enrolment of 575 students. How can someone operate a school of nearly 600 kids with just over $2000? That's less than $4 per student, no wonder they can't afford chairs...

We visited the Grade 4 class which has 83 students in the class, overwhelming. The class rooms are about the same physical size as the Canadian classes that we’re used to - only with about three times the number of children.

I took a look around the school grounds, no play structures, no sports fields. If you look in the background of this photo you’ll see a primitive structure. It is the kitchen, lunch room and cafeteria all rolled into one. In this country the government provides funding for primary school aged children to receive a meal at school and this is where the meal comes from. Corn maize is cooked in large cast iron pots over an open fire and that is their lunch.

Iris cares very much about the children she teaches and tries her best with her limited resources. She is very proud of the trophy the school received for academic excellence. The area is very remote and the teachers feel abandoned, forgotten and not cared about. When we left, Iris hugged me and said “Please help us, don’t forget us when you leave here.”