TJ Goes to Africa: My Carpool: A Lesson In Patience

This is my school carpool and, much to my dismay, we're usually late. This is what they look like. Well, at least that's what they look like when I tried to take a picture of them.

This year we had a chance to put the kids in a school down the road a bit instead of the one right here by our house. So for the kids entering high school this year, they don't have a three minute walk to school. They have a walk over an hour! But that's not fun, so I take them to school everyday in the truck. I'm so nice I even pick them up at the end of the day.

The school we're sending them too isn't any "nicer". In fact, the one here in our neigbhorhood is arguably the nicest in the city. The problem isn't in the building. You see, at this new school the teachers are nice, they know the kids are living with us in the orphanage and have offered to give them extra help with exams at the end of the year, and they don't complicate my life as the one in charge of handling all their schooling.

The old school (where we are hoping to take the remaining kids from and transfer them to be with these others) has an administration that tell teachers that our kids have it too easy---what not having parents and all---and to never give them good grades and demand that kids contribute monthly fees for things like "electricity" and "new administrator bathrooms".

So, in other words, we found a school that treats our kids fair and sent them to it. The problem is getting them there and bringing them home. I take them for the start and pick them up at the end. And thank goodness we have the truck, that is not the problem. The problem is having patience. School technically starts for them at 12:30pm and goes till 5:30pm (and yes, these short hours are for high school). Getting them out the door is a problem, every single day.

The other problem is, well, just take a closer look a that picture...

The frown, the posture, the look of genuine dissinterest, that's no way to take a picture. She doesn't look happy to be going to school at all. Let's try this again.

If not for Victor tucking his pants in, or whatever he's doing, it would be a slight improvement. Oh well, I'm sure I can just photoshop the good parts together. And just as we got in the truck ready to go, they reminded me Nolita was not in the picture.

Nolita, holding the pink hat, gets left behind about once a week because she takes three hours to get ready and I'm not going to make everybody late for school on account of her. But this day, she finally made it on time. The only problem is, for Pete's sake, these kids can't take a decent picture. So we kept trying and came up with this.