Hey everyone,
I spoke with Grace on the phone the other day - it sounds like she is doing well, but is still recovering. She said she's avoiding "boda boda" (motorcycle) rides because they make her head hurt! I also received word that she is having a little bit of trouble with the noise in the classroom so she's taking it easy as the school year starts. The doctors said it is expected for her to take several months to fully recover; she did just have brain surgery. Hopefully the sensitivity will go down soon so she can get back to her magical teaching of our P1s.
Again, I'm grateful for everyone's help with this!
Washingtonpost.com ran a story this morning on Tr. Grace - check it out:
A Blessing for 'Teacher Grace'
Sister School Relationship Helps a Ugandan Receive Critical Surgery
By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff WriterMonday, February 9, 2009; B02
As a third-grade class at Arlington Traditional School fired questions at Grace Lusweswe, it was clear the teacher was not from here.
"Do you give chickens as gifts, like to thank somebody?" one girl asked.
Yes, and sometimes eggs, she said.
"Do the kids live far away from the school?" another asked.
Some of them, she said. Some walk as far as five miles to get to class.
"Do they take field trips?"
Lusweswe paused, looking confused. And so John Wanda, the founder of the school in Uganda where Lusweswe teaches, answered.
"A lot of these children have never gone to a city or a town. They have never seen running water. They have never seen a building that is two floors," he said. "There's some children who have never driven in a car."
For years, teachers and administrators from Arlington Traditional have visited Arlington Academy of Hope, their sister school in rural Uganda, taking with them books and lesson plans. But Lusweswe is the first teacher from the African school to visit Arlington Count.
How she ended up there, visiting classes on Jan. 13, is a testament to the strength of an unusual relationship forged between two schools more than 7,200 miles apart.
Lusweswe, 46, known as "Teacher Grace," started having problems seeing out of her right eye in 2006. She said she thought it was the result of reading without electric lights, but the problem gradually grew worse, with pain so intense that she felt as if her eye would be pushed from its socket. In 2007, she learned she had a growing tumor and needed surgery. The doctor recommended that the procedure be done outside Africa, suggesting India or the United States.
"I looked at the places that he mentioned, and they were so expensive. How could I raise so much money?" Lusweswe said. "I was so scared. . . . I had lost hope."
About that time, word of Lusweswe's plight was making its way through the brick-walled school that Wanda had started five years ago with donations from Arlingtonians and others. Charlee Vorhees, who was volunteering as a teacher at the school, contacted her stepfather, Leonard Gutnik, an internist at Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D. Doctors there agreed to do the surgery for free. Lusweswe, a mother of five, only had to get there. So another volunteer helped her obtain a visa, and the Arlington Academy of Hope Foundation agreed to pay the airfare.
Toward the end of December, Lusweswe's tumor was removed at the South Dakota hospital. After several weeks of healing, she made her way to Arlington Traditional School. There she seemed a celebrity, as students waved to her in the cafeteria and were eager to tell her the names of children their families sponsored. In the hallways, the strong ties between the two places could not be missed. On one wall, a brightly colored map showed the distance between the two countries. On another, a display case was packed with pictures of the Ugandan children and the gifts they have sent over the years.
Principal Holly Hawthorne keeps a framed photo of the first student she sponsored near her desk.
"Somehow, the tragedy of Grace being very ill has turned into a blessing," Hawthorne said. "We've been fighting over her time, trying to remember she's had brain surgery and should be resting."
Arlington Traditional accepts students from across the county based on an application and lottery system. The public school, with students whose families come from 26 countries, emphasizes traditional education.
Lusweswe patiently answered each student's question, giving no hint that she was tired. No, there were no wild animals running loose, she told one child. No, they did not have classroom pets like hamsters, but many of the children have domesticated animals, such as goats, at home, she told another.
She would say afterward that she, too, was learning.
The trip marked the first time she would see snow and machines that wash clothes and dishes, she said. She marveled at classroom walls covered with bright decorations that reinforce reading. And in contrast to the blackboard she uses that has to be repainted periodically, she saw an electronic whiteboard in sync with the Internet. In her community, she said, her school has the rare fortune of having computers, and it's not uncommon for people to come look at them.
Her school is also the only one where children receive breakfast and lunch and where classes are limited to about 45 children, compared with others that often have more than 100 per class.
"They like it so much being in school," Lusweswe said of her students. "When we say it's time to go home, they stay sitting at school. We keep telling them, 'Please, now it's time to go home.' "
This month marks five years since Wanda opened the school in Bumwalukani, where he grew up. He and his wife, Joyce, ended up in the Washington area after they won a visa in a State Department lottery and chose the flight to Dulles International Airport because it was the cheapest, he said. They stayed because he found work with the American Chiropractic Association. As they made a life here, Wanda said, they couldn't help noticing the differences between their children's school, Arlington Traditional, and the ones they had known.
"Everything we were seeing was amazing to us," Wanda, 44, said. "And we began thinking how can we include a little bit of this in our community."
About 325 children in grades one through seven attend the academy. (Arlington Traditional has 442 students from pre-kindergarten through grade five.) Two clinics were opened at the Ugandan school after it was found that many students were missing class for such illnesses as malaria. So far, every graduating student from the school has passed a required national exam, with many scoring in the top ranks, Wanda said. That record stands out, he added, because performance on the test has declined across the country and in the district where the school is located.
"What we have shown is it's possible, that these kids who are growing up in the poorest of places, they have the same potential as anyone else," Wanda said. "If you give these kids the opportunity . . . it transforms them entirely."
