Muddy Lotus School Re-Opens!

Today was the first week of school in nine months at Muddy Lotus Primary School. Filled with a mixture of emotions, 50 of our 400 students arrived at 8am to embark upon their next chapter: school. For the second day of school, 60 students came followed by 178 students who arrived on the third morning. With each day, the student’s attendance and confidence increased. We were proud to learn that we had the highest attendance rates in the entire region, whereas most schools only had a return of 10-15 students.
However, underneath the morning greetings at Muddy Lotus, there were stories of why so many of their young colleagues were not by their side. Fear and apprehension was the initial consensus. This notion was quickly overturned we learned that many of our students had been forced to develop a new priority: finding a way to feed themselves each day.
Although my trip was amazingly successful, I heard heartbreaking stories from my students about their parents retreating to the bush to find food for the family which often produces little to nothing. We have been on such a long, powerful journey together and to know that they have been on the brink of starvation is hard to swallow.

We are a government school and therefore have been promised school supplies for our teachers to begin instruction, including chalk, journals, notebooks, etc. Due to the severe food security challenges in the country, we have also been promised to be provided lunch by the Ministry of Education/World Food Program but this too has yet to make its way to us. We will now purchase our own school supplies and are exploring options on how to provide basic nutrition for our students as the Ebola outbreak has made access to nourishment even more of a dire daily feat. We have received sanitation supplies and thermometers from the Ministry of Education (which we already have in abundance because of our robust Ebola response program) but we are thankful that these supplies were provided for schools that do not have them.
We will get through this.
We will learn more about who we are and who we can be.
We will be better because of it.
We look forward to our school being a place for learning, but also for security, love, compassion, and building the inner muscle of being grateful for every moment.
Here’s to sharing more progress and positive news soon. Until then…Shine On!
Tiffany Persons