Good morning peeps! I just wanted to do a huge shout out to the most beautiful, smartly dressed (I hope!), hard working and generally fandabydozey tutor group in the world, class 3L2, aswell as everybody else at Wallace of course! How are you all this morning? I hope you're all bright and breezy and ready for the day of work ahead. Johnathon I hope you're drinking something healthier than fizzy juice for breakfast these days 'n' Michaela are you remembering: "NO STRIPES"?!
I miss you all and I'm sending you all my love from Israel. I have just arrived here having spent the last 3 (crazy) months in Africa. So far Lorna (my best friend and travelling buddy) and I have visited Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda and Kenya! I am loving every minute and I am storing up my stories to tell you all when I return to Scotland. So we're now in Israel, don't worry it really is not as scary as the pictures we see on the news. It's stunning! I'm here only for two weeks and then we move on to India!
So I hope you all have a wonderful day. Please work hard! The most valuable thing I learned in Africa was how blessed we are at home to have a free education. Most of the poverty there is caused because of lack of education. Sometimes, I know we take it for granted but we should try, from now on, not to! The children in Africa would kill, literally, to have an education. Some of them never attend (as in not even primary) school simply because their parents can't afford the fees. (Fees are usually about ten pounds a term. This is considered a lot of money in Africa as some people do not earn that in a year.) This results in them not being able to read or write and therefore they find it impossible to get employment and they end up in desperate, desperate circumstances: they end up living on the streets, begging and homeless. Others, who do have the opportunity to go to school, make a real effort to go. We met children who walk at least 3 or 4 miles every day to get to school. When they arrive they are crammed into classrooms which cannot accommodate them: they are simply too small for the some hundred students invading them. Yip, that's right, most classes in Africa have at least 100 pupils in each! Then they don't have pens or pencils, jotters or text books. Really it's so sad to see, especially when I think about amazing schools like Wallace where we have so much.
I know it is so hard to imagine and I'm not asking you to necessarily do anything about their situations I'm just begging you to appreciate yours. You go to an amazing school (you guys all know how much I loved being there) and you have fantastic teachers and facilities (which are gonna get even better in the new school). Make the most of them! What you do now, today, in the next fifteen minutes may determine the grades you get and the job you get for the rest of your lives! When you're bored in class today and you're distracting others remember you're depriving that person from an excellent education and what's more it's an education the children I've met in Africa would love to have! Have a brilliant day. I will be thinking about you and missing you as always!
Love Miss Bonnar x
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