Today I visited Desa Kukusan for the first time in months.
It was worse than I remembered.
The school is in a state of utter disrepair. It's filthy and it's falling down. I don't even know if it's structurally sound…
I spent an hour or so walking through the crumbling rooms, trying to visualise a solution - one that wasn't going to take an army and cost a gazillion dollars.
It's completely overwhelming. Walking in one barely knows where to begin. There is goat poop and crumbled pieces of termite ridden wood everywhere. The tables and chairs are falling apart and the blackboards are hanging off the walls. Glass in the windows has either been broken and is missing, or is so filthy you can barely see through it - it makes me wonder why you would bother putting glass in the windows in the first place.
It's just a mess. It's a big, fat mess...
It's hard for me to hand over the resources all of you have so kindly donated or paid for when I can't guarantee their fate…
It's also really hard to NOT hand over resources.
I want to get resources to these kids. I want to create a welcoming learning environment for them.
But how?
I started by going back with my team and cleaning the classrooms. It's not perfect, but it's better. I have also made a plan - in my head, not officially - to refurbish a room to make an actual library - with book shelves and mats on the floor so the kids can come and sit and read…
They're not huge strides, they're just baby steps. But forward is forward.
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