29 November 2007

We visited a school today that had recently benefited from five new classrooms gifted by a German donor couple. The missionary couple who provided the funds specified that the classrooms must be used only in the instruction of blind students. There are five blind students at the school and an unknown number of various ages in the larger woreda area. At the time we saw the new classrooms, one was packed full with a class of (seeing) students, and the other four were locked and vacant. The school has no materials to use in teaching blind students – though the German couple has promised to provide these at a later date. The school used to have a teacher trained in the education of blind and visually impaired students, but she won the lottery for an American diversity visa and now resides in the U.S. The school is waiting on a new teacher to complete training in Welisso. Until then, and likely for some time afterward, the classrooms sit idle outside the greatly overcrowded main school building.