My Tembaletu Experience

The past few days working at Tembaletu have been unforgettable. Even after such a short time I have fallen in love with the students and staff there. What I love most about the school is that they embody teamwork and compassion. While helping with admin work, I noticed how all staff members, administrators, teachers, and therapists, worked together to get the school up and running. Everyone helped set up desks and chairs in classrooms and organize the school year schedule. What stood out to me the most was the compassion the students have for each other. Since staff is low, the children rely on each other for help when they need it. All the students are pretty independent, but sometimes I would see kids on crutches pushing kids in wheelchairs to the cafeteria. Even some of the older students helped teachers carry desks into the appropriate classrooms.

I learned how to play rocks during break time. It's a lot of fun, but I'm not very good. It's essentially Jacks, but they play with rocks instead. The older girls were really good and would laugh at me whenever I played. It was fun interacting with them and hearing them talk about what music they like and what they like to do for fun.


On our last day, after finishing some admin work, we were able to take the younger kids to the therapy room to play around before the school day ended. You would have though these were your average kids the way they were moving around. And boy did they move around! There were these steps that they loved to just walk up and down on. Even a boy who has no function in his legs joined the fun by crawling up and down stairs using only his upper body. It was amazing to see their energy and smiles.

This was the part of the trip that had the greatest impact on me. After today I realized that all these kids want to do is be kids! They want to run around, scream, and get into trouble and don't want to be limited by their physical disabilities. They have physical disabilities, yes, but that comes secondary. They will always be kids first, disability last. It was amazing to see them be kids.