SOS Children’s Village

The SOS Children’s Village is large complex in Tlokweng (a few minutes southeast of Gaborone, near the border) where 200+ orphans and vulnerable children live together in community houses, each of which has a house mother. Deborah and Sarah, two other Flying Mission volunteers, have recently been hatching the idea of offering after-school homework help one or two evenings a week. Last week, I had Wednesday off and was able to go along with them for their first evening of work there. We got there early, believe it or not, and so sat around waiting for them to be ready for us. Eventually, we were introduced to about four kids who apparently had somehow been selected from their houses or volunteered or something, and were supposed to have homework for us to do. They led us by the hand to their various houses, where we sat down with them and started working (more or less) on some homework they needed help with. My little boy, Thabo, resisting stubbornly all of my attempts at conversation, led me to his room, opened his backpack, closed it again, and indicated that he had no homework to do (again not speaking, communicating instead with the common upward-facing open palm wave that he had nothing). Well, I wasn’t sure what to do so I hung out in his room for a while trying unsuccessfully to chat with Thabo and chatting a little more successfully with some of his housemates. To my relief, I discovered that one of his housemates needed some help with math homework, so I helped him do some metric conversions for a while and then left when we were finished to see if any of my compadres had had any more luck. I found Stefan on one of the house porches surrounded by a loud and animated group of kids. There were three homework books open on the table but very little homework getting done, as the kids were much more interested in asking Stefan questions and generally having a good time. I sat down with them and soon found myself helping Thapang with his math homework. He is a fun kid who really seemed to enjoy doing his homework when someone paid enough attention to him to appreciate what he was doing (before I came and sat down with him, he was very distracted by the other kids and didn’t seem to be getting much done). Every time he got an answer right, he would give me a high-five and the African thumb-press handshake that the younger people here give to each other. We had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed getting to know Thapang. After we finished, we joined the rest of the kids in talking about all kinds of random things from Germany and the US to dancing and music. You could tell they really enjoyed the attention and were having a grand time. After meeting Thapang’s older brother and running around in the rain with Thapang on my shoulders, it was soon time to leave. We had a great time there, though, and I look forward to being able to go back on days when I’m not on call. I have really enjoyed catching these glimpses of Flying Mission’s ministry here and getting involved on a hands-on level with some of the people of this country. In some ways, it makes me wish that I was a normal short-termer like Stefan and Christian who get to do things like this several days of the week. At the same time, though, I’m loving my work here and wouldn’t give it up for anything. Well, that’s enough writing to poop me out for the time being…keep in touch and stay well.