Saying good-bye (temporarily) to Karanse

Yesterday, Friday, marked the end of our student teachers' time in Kranse (except for Abraham who is based there). It was a bittersweet time. Probably more bitter for me, sweet for the student teachers! I always HATE saying good-bye to Karanse and those precious teachers and children, but our students are SO excited to be coming back to En Gedi and getting together with their fellow students. So, that is understandable. We stayed pretty busy during the morning, gathering up materials, packing up some of their stuff in my car to bring back, as they will all take the bus, and that's hard to do with all their stuff! We also had had them plan a good-bye lunch for the teachers, and I went to the lower classes giving out stickers to say good-bye to them.

One of my sweet student teachers, Daniel, called me off to a private room so he could personally thank me, on behalf of both Joelle and me, for all the work we have done for him as his mentors. He even had gifts for both of us and letters telling exactly how we have enriched his life!

(I have to add that we have been studying Love Languages, and we have discussed both gifts and words of affirmation, and he used them both!)

Later in the day, after I was already back in Arusha, I got a text message from Abraham, thanking me for what I have done for him as his mentor. These are the things I wil treasure as we end this part of their training.

At the lunch, there were speeches by our students, then the Karanse teachers started in on their thank you's to us for all we had done to bless them. My nickname is Mama Karanse, and very sweet Issagya spoke about how true that is: that my heart really is full of Karanse! When I finally had to speak, I told them how very glad I was that this is only "baadaye" (later in Swahili), not "kwaherini" (good bye to you all) because I would be crying and crying! I won't be back properly till the beginning of February, though I may pop in before that. I will go back to check on Abraham's progress through the first three months of next year. It seems like a long time till then!