School days, School days...

A pretty typical urban classroom

I received a note from my son's Scoutmaster this morning that their troop is gathering school supplies and soccer balls for us to distribute to the schools we are working on. Way to go Scouts!

The kids are the bright spot of any field trip. They are excited to see us, and always hopeful one of us has a soccer ball or candy for them. The classrooms are crowded, understaffed and poorly supplied. We are rebuilding hundreds of schools in southern Iraq, but we can do very little about the furnishings or the school supplies. Several people in the office are soliciting corporations and co-workers back home for assistance. It is difficult to get things to the folks that really need it here, which is a common theme for relief work everywhere. Politics, corruption, greed, and protection rackets are a bigger problem than shipping, but shipping is no easy deal here either. These are classrooms where the better urban schools have desks and chairs, and some of the rural thatched roof schools still have dirt (mud) floors with a chalkboard leaning against the wall in front. The kids are eager to learn and happy to be in school. There are many kids out here that go to work on construction sites or herding sheep instead of going to school, they have no other option. I've seen twelve year olds on construction jobs chipping concrete floors with a chisel to smooth out the rough spots.