Last day of teaching

Today was our last day of teaching at CDO. It was sad to hear the final chant of "Thank you teacher..." from all the children.  Nicole spent a lot of time doing some nursing. Many of the students have open wounds that constantly bleed, weep or fester in the heat. A little cut can take weeks to heal. One of the girls, Moum, has an awful sore on her leg that constantly weeps and seems to be getting bigger and bigger. At the beginning of his class Stan asked to see everyone's sores and if they needed attention he sent them up to see Nicole. It was a bit disturbing when one of the boys, Ping, surreptitiously used a pencil to open one of his scabs so he could get some attention from Nicole. We told him off, but it is really sad to see children so craving attention that they would do that to themselves, especially when they don't realise how easy it is for infection to set in in this climate. There was not water available at the time, so Nicole was forced to squeeze a bit of alcohol on her fingers between each child to try keep things sterile. She used some cotton wool to clean out all their wounds.

We told the children it was the last class we would teach them and throughout the day many of them came up quietly and handed us little notes or pictures to remember them with. It was very cute to watch them try and write a surprise "thank you" note to us. We knew what they were up to, but they thought they were being very sneaky going up to people who knew more English and asking for help to write their notes. Those who couldn't write English very well drew pictures instead.

One of the interesting forms of "massage" around here is what the locals call "Dr. Fish Massage". You dangle your feet into a fish tank and let the fish inside nibble off all your dead skin. We did this last week when Bill and Henny Berends were around. It is terribly ticklish. We are a bit dubious as to whether the fish do that great a job, but for $1 as long as you want, or $2 for a beer and as long as you want it was fun to try it out.