Empowering the village

After dropping Kate and Jenson at the house of Kate’s friend, nearby, I reached the school at 9am. I expected to be the first to arrive but was amazed to find everyone waiting for me – a sign of their eagerness to learn English, but also an indication of the difficulty of communicating a plan in this part of the world. 

Qastal village

Qastal village has a population of about 3000 and the people there are very poor. It is famous for having one of the world's oldest minarets, built in about 720AD. We have had some involvement in this village before, with playgroup and English lessons, but it came to an end a couple of years ago after the village library, which we were using, closed down.

Two weeks before, Kate had met the headmistress, who was asking her if I could come and teach English to the children in this small village school. I suggested that, in order to help the village better, I could teach some adults how to teach English to the children. Kate’s friend’s daughter offered to find some volunteers.

My plan was to teach the volunteers a simple English lesson and they could teach exactly the same thing to the children immediately afterwards. The teachers of the school also wanted help with their English conversation skills, so I offered to teach them for an hour, after teaching the volunteers, while the volunteers taught the children.

16 volunteers and 146 children

When I arrived, I was surprised to find all the children waiting for their lesson at 9am, when I had told them to come at 10am. 146 children were waiting but there were also 16 volunteers, which was also more than I expected. Some of the volunteers had no English ability themselves, so I taught them a very basic lesson that they would easily be able to teach to the children, most of whom were also absolute beginners. There were not enough classrooms in the school for each volunteer to have their own class, so they decided to teach them in pairs.

10 teachers and 3 mothers

I then started a lesson with ten of the teachers and three random mothers who decided to join in. They enjoyed the conversation class and then, when I had finished, I went over to see the end of the volunteers' classes with the children, who all seemed to be doing really well and the children were very well behaved.

Breakfast with the family

After the class, I went to join Kate at her friend’s house and I met her friend’s husband for the first time. We ate a nice breakfast meal with them and heard a confusing story about his friend’s legal problems in Saudi Arabia, which they wanted my help with. I have no idea how to help them, but I promised to look into it (Does anyone know anyone who is an expert in Saudi corporate law?). After eating a delicious Jordanian breakfast with them, we returned home.