Our fourth stop today was at the St Mary’s Catholic Primary School. The school is just on the edge of the Diki Village and is also in the town of Hwange. This school was established in 1935. We spent two hours at the school and also made a donation to the school. We met the school principal and she spoke to us for about twenty minutes. She said the school has 801 students and 24 teachers. For kids aged three to five, they have 111 students and five teachers. The school has three terms with each term being three months with one month off school in between terms. School costs $15 per term or $45 per year. The school accepts children from all religions. Kids walk to school from as far away as three and a half miles, and some of them are very young. The ages of the kids at this school is three to twelve, but sometimes they have students as old as fifteen or sixteen. The school does not provide food for the children. You can see the kids gathering to greet us on our arrival next to the school sign.

We visited a classroom and each of us met with a few students. You can see Cory and Vicky at a table in this photo. After visiting with a few students, the students sang us a few songs. Then we sang them a few of our American songs. After that, our tour guide was talking to the kids about all things good and great – and I was looking around the classroom and thinking about it all. Suddenly, I heard our tour guide say “and I’m going to ask Bill Bosworth to address the class and share a few words of wisdom”. With that jerk back to reality, I said a few words to the class, though I’m not sure how wise were my words.

We got lots of smiles from the school kids. The Overseas Adventure Travel company is owned by the Grand Circle Company who runs the Grand Circle Foundation. The foundation contributes to schools all around the world where they conduct tours. This school is one of the schools that Grand Circle supports. We have very much enjoyed our stops to schools on our trips and this was a good one as well. It’s tough to beat their smiles for making me feel good.

This is the kids play area. It looks just like the wilderness parks where we went on game drives. But from all the smiling and laughing, you would think this was a fantastic play area.

I was getting ready to leave a school room when I noticed a small, faded sign on the wall. Ever the nosy tourist, I checked it out. I think we should put this sign on the walls at all of our schools and our work places too.