Happy September!! I cannot believe one month has passed since my arrival here.....

Soon after my last post on Sunday, we were blessed with the first rain of the season!! I have never been so happy to smell the freshness of rain. I had great hopes that it would clear the air of all the exhaust and pollution, but to no avail. Sunday evening was quite lovely as it fell pretty hard and allowed for a fresh perspective, but by morning the thick polluted air was still covering the city. For some reason, I have actually found it harder to breathe this week than in prior ones - perhaps it is due to the building layer of scum on my lungs, but I am hopeful this feeling will not last. And since I will be traveling to the mountains this weekend, relief will soon be upon me! :-)

Kharim has been making great progress this week at Gisimba! As of this afternoon, he could identify every letter of the alphabet, without hesitation, except for the letter "I". That was huge today!!! I was sooo proud of him! We began this week working on sounds of letters. I separated the vowels to really have him focus on getting those sounds "perfected." I have started with three-letter words, keeping the last the same and just changing the first. Then I showed him how just changing the vowel in the middle makes a completely different word - and he has started to see why the vowel sounds are so important and I see him trying very hard to do them correctly. Today I started taking some flash cards and having him sound out the words that did not have any "exceptions" to the sounds....he was doing sooooo well!!! My nose tingled as I watched him focus and think really hard about how to sound them out. Granted, he has a long way to go, but I really think he has been coming along well. One of the ladies from the Belgium organization that has been around Gisimba for a while, told me yesterday that she thinks he has a learning disorder and that he just cannot remember anything....I was soooo upset with that comment...I see him try so hard, I just don´t think he has had anyone to really give him the attention that he needed to get this done....I am really looking forward to the progress he may be able to make in the next two months!

For once I will let this entry stay short. I am working on posting some additional pictures of kids at Gisimba with a better one of Khraim, too :-)

Hugs to all!!!!