Day 348 - English Lessons

Boys in Sandra's living room with workbooks

I decided to explore the possibility that the reason I felt a calling for these boys was to do with their need for English. I couldn't see into the future, after all, although three meetings out of three had led to requests for money, so I had that clue to the purpose. At the end of our third meeting, I decided to put together a workbook using some of their photos. I printed out selected photos and then drew lines at the bottom of the page where I wrote a sentence about each photo, leaving plenty of space for the boys to write more. Initially I asked the GSO staff if they could get 16 copies of the workbook made for me so I could give one to each boy the following week. I wanted the photos in color, but learned the cost would have been extremely high, about $400 for the 16 copies. I settled instead for black and white photos.

Even before I gave the worksheets to the boys, they had made a hit with the local staff of the embassy. Daniel, the Human Resources Specialist, told me the GSO staff who made arrangements to have the sheets copied were impressed that I would be doing something they considered so generous for a group of boys I hardly knew. 

After watching the boys at practice the second time, the first time when all the boys had uniforms, we went back to my house for popcorn and potato chips and I handed out the workbooks. Dawit was again my translator, although I suspect some of his translations may have been along the lines of "The joke is too long to translate. Just laugh."

The schools in Eritrea introduce English to students in fifth grade, at about 11 years old.  Most of the boys had told me they were at least that age although I learned later that the actual age of the boys may not be what they reported. All children in the same class were considered the same age. So whatever their real ages, all but the youngest of them would have been in classes with English instruction. Ironically, Dawit was among the youngest and yet his English was the best. The rest spoke English like I spoke German in 9th grade when I first was exposed to a foreign language - I only spoke it in class because I knew I didn't know enough to express myself. In addition, English isn't just a different language, it is written in a different alphabet.

It seemed clear pretty quickly that it was unlikely the boys would write anything themselves on the pages. And since I only wrote sentences on a few of the pages, there weren't model sentences they could copy.  So if improving their English was part of my calling, I didn't hit the nail on the head with the worksheets.

Cover of the photo book of Team USA members

Then Lisa told me about Snapfish. Since 16 photocopies of workbooks would have cost about $400, having three hard cover books of photos printed for about $50 was a better bargain, especially since it was clear that the photos were going to be the highlight of anything in the books. A few sentences in English provided some language.

The following week, the boys provided me with a photo of themselves that was taken in a downtown studio. That photo became the cover of the book. It took a few weeks to arrive, three copies, one for the boys, one for Jewel, and one for me.

By the time the books arrived, I had also purchased a dozen soccer balls and pinnies for the boys to distinguish themselves as two teams as their practices shifted into scrimmages after the warmup exercises.