3rd Grade Math

I have been learning many things during my few weeks here. Every day brings some new adventure or revelation about this place. I have spent the last two weeks balancing my time between the hospital and our compound, building shelves, tank stands and various other little projects.
I really enjoy working with the Sudanese and through them I am continually reminded of the many blessings I have enjoyed in my life, most especially my education. One of the bigger projects I have worked on in the past few weeks has been putting in shelving for the drug store at the hospital. The man who is in charge of getting the medicines for patients and keeping things organized is a guy named Nika. He is an incredibly cheerful and helpful man who is probably in his mid 20s. Last week I was looking at all the medicine and started to ask him what the different drugs were used for and he would explain to me what each one. Nika was a refugee in Ethiopia for many years and it was there that he learned English, so I asked him if he'd learned about medicine there. He said no and that he had learned it from a small nurses training program at the hospital. He then proceeded to tell me how he had heard of a secondary school opening south of here and how he really wanted to go to it so that he could complete his high school education. His enthusiasm and dedication to education really humbled me - I often take my college education for granted, let alone my high school.
Then this week I was in for a real shocker. That same nurses program that Nika had gone through is now working on educating about 15 new students to work at the hospital. The Kenyan nurse who is teaching the students has been going over shots and vaccines and stuff like that so I agreed to let her give me one of my remaining vaccines in front of the class as a demonstration. I got there a little bit early and sat outside listening to the lesson she was working on...and what I heard astonished me. It turns out that as she was teaching them she realized that most of the students did not know how to multiply or divide and so she was having to take time to explain multiplication to them. As I sat outside listening to her teach some basic multiplication my mind flashed back to last year when I volunteered at an underprivileged elementary school in Winston-Salem. There I helped 3rd and 4th graders with multiplication and many of those students where considered to be very far behind in their learning. When I listened to these future nurses learning multiplication I realized how blessed America is - even in its most impoverished state the kids are learning what adults in Sudan wish they could have learned. The people here are smart and want to learn - the unfortunate thing is that there is hardly any education around. We help with a small community center that offers classes and I am told that in the mornings they are swamped with over 400 students. I realize how blessed I have been to have received the education I have and that I should certainly not take it for granted especially when those I am surrouned by would give anything to have it. Pray that I will use my blessing in a way that is pleasing to my King in this place.