SILAS, A 19-YEAR-OLD FROM SWITZERLAND, has spent the past year as a missionary in Kaffrine, Senegal where he lived with a family and helped their seven children with their studies. Through his service and relationships, he has had many opportunities to speak and model the Christian life. Silas writes:
Bringing the kids to school and helping them study in the afternoons has been my main task over the last few months here in Senegal. I now have great relationships with them and most of the kids have improved their results in school. On the other hand, I have been confronted with different views of time management and efficiency (I'm Swiss) which has caused misunderstanding and frustration. That seems to be part of being a teacher in a different culture; in the end I feel both sides have grown to understand each other better.
For example, Fatou, my oldest primary school student, seemed to have a lazy attitude about math lessons. I didn`t enjoy teaching her because she was not motivated and thought she would never have a chance to understand what I tried to explain in my broken French. Six times a year the students receive test results; Fatou wasn`t even earning half of the total points overall, so I decided to focus on her math. It was hard work and took longer than with the other students. I had to learn math vocabulary in French; she was working hard and I gave her more homework. We prayed a lot for her. When we got back the results of the last big tests recently, we saw that not only her math grades, but also her marks in all the other subjects, have improved! I agreed with her teacher who told me that he thinks that Fatou’s attitude has changed for the better. She was one of the highest-scoring students in her class during this last marking period and she more than doubled her points!
When the afternoons are long and hot, the kids and I start to feel tired and lazy. The heat sometimes just kills our motivation and then the lessons end in traditional chanting or dances.
Once, when the household was totally busy, we weren`t able to stay concentrated and my oldest student Abdou and I climbed the tree in the middle of our compound to study up in the branches. It wasn’t long before all the students were up in the tree! When the lesson was over we decided to “borrow” all the shoes we could find and hang them on all the branches, so that it ended up looking like a Senegalese Christmas tree. After a while all the shoe-searching people started to come looking for their flip-flops. We gave them back to their owners from up in the tree. We had great fun together that afternoon.
Besides the progress the students are making in school and the great fun we are having, I see God working on the kids and on myself as their teacher or older brother. He leads many of our discussions and has destroyed many cultural barriers. Without His help all of this would not have been possible. Let`s never stop praying. Thank you for your support!
Silas' great work is part of the Kaffrine Scholarship Program, a partnership of SIM missionaries with Senegalese Christians to assist children to stay in school. The vision of the program is to see youth from the Christian community attending school and shining like bright lights through exemplary schoolwork, character, and spiritual growth. This project is an investment in the next generation of Wolof church leaders.
