Back to basics.

This image about sums up my recent experience in Zimbabwe.


It's the first grade class at Gwanda's Ward 22 Primary School. The school is in the middle of nowhere, fourteen kilometers from the nearest town. That said, there are squatter huts on the land adjacent to the school that were built by women who were so determined to have their kids educated that they moved from even more rural locations to this tumble-down school in the middle of nowhere.

Understaffed and with no resources but chalk and blackboards, the teachers at this school, who earn $100 a month, are educating kids, and believe it or not, they are learning. First graders are learning simple addition and seventh graders are studying geometry.

My hat goes off and my heart goes out to the parents and teachers who are succeeding when everything around them is failing.