Brought the room to tears.

There has been quite a bit of confusion at work lately. Mainly, myself and Jackie are confused. Jackie is a Canadian, long term, volunteer. One of her jobs is to consult/audit Community Based Childcare Centres (CBCCs) and to assist with early childhood development strategies. She came to check out AHOSO’s CBCC. Now in my time here, I have never seen or heard of the CBCC, but I am mostly kept in the office working on OVC policy, so I wasn’t surprised. Anyway, Jackie came and the AHOSO staff were unbelievably vague and we couldn’t get to the bottom of whether or not it actually exists. When Jackie left, she insisted that within the next two weeks, I had to be taken to the CBCC to see it.

Today was the day. Having tagged along with Jackie to another CBCC visit, I felt like I had an idea of what cursory things to look for and ask about.(This includes things like observing activities and finding out- Do they have a schedule? Do they keep a log of who comes? What educational materials are there? Do they have latrines? Do they cover them and spread ash around? Do the kids get fed? Are the dishes stacked or spread out to dry? How many care givers/child/age group? Etc)

When I showed up, all 36 of the kids began crying and screaming as my presence was terrifying to them. I instil fear in all apparently! I was only there for an hour or so before walking back with John, one of the AHOSO field officers. He let me know that most kids there had never seen an azungu before. I was a little suspect of the CBCC as all the kids looked the same age and several were in uniforms.  Also, it was in a store front, not a church like they told me, nor were there 70 kids like they told Jackie. I was able to dig a little on the walk back with John...turns out it was not AHOSO’s CBCC, it was an independent nursery school. Will they take me to the real one? I still don’t know if there is a real one.