Week 2 Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

A Humbling Highlight
Sekolah Bisa is a school for shanty kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a chance of an education and who live a life of poverty.
The school was the brainchild of sixth formers at the British International School, Jakarta and has been running for three years.
Some of these children have no documentation such as birth certificates, so officially they don’t even exist!
Usually these children would be begging and scavenging on the streets and refuse tips eeking out a precarious existence but because of donations and the work of professionals and volunteers, a bamboo school has been built for them beside a busy road on a site owned by The Body Shop.
I was invited for the afternoon and was made most welcome by Netti Hempell, the co-ordinator of the project. I got stuck right in helping some of the kids with their under sea collages and played a game or two of snakes and ladders using stones instead of counters.
And then yes, you’ve guessed, it was Storytime!
‘Too Much Talk’ went down a treat but the highlight for me was ‘There Was An Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly’.
As the song was sung, pupils and teachers drew on the blackboard the various beasts that ended up inside the unfortunate woman’s tummy. So now every child in that school knows the English words: fly,spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and horse. And even though, as far as I know, that little old lady didn’t swallow a member of the genus Sus, (look it up on Wikipedia) they’ll certainly never ever forget the word…PiG!
And I won’t forget them.
Please check out www.sekolabisa.org