Cornerstone Academy

Cornerstone Academy is run by SIM's City Ministries in Gero, a village about ten minutes along a dirt track from Bukuru.  It's one of the steps in their ministry to street children and orphans which begins in Gidan Bege (House of Hope in Hausa) in Jos.  That's where rescued children are taken initially and where they stay for about six months until they're ready to be moved to Cornerstone Academy.  After the academy they move back to Jos to Transition House to prepare for the transition from life in a children's to home to independence as adults.

Teacher training

Anne Karin Lauritzen from Denmark supervises the academy and asked if I would go and talk to the Cornerstone teachers about thinking creatively.  It was a challenge and opportunity for me but, as I was going to stress to the teachers, when an opportunity comes along you need to have the courage to take it and have an experience if you hope to learn and develop yourself.  Yesterday I went with her.  We had fun with the teachers and I hope something of what I said was useful to them.  I'm sure that after promoting the memory-enhancing properties of the dopamine produced by having fun, there'll be a lot of laughter coming from the classrooms in the next few days.
We also had some fun towards the end as we discussed such important questions as "Does a sound exist?" "If you could take a pill that would make you always happy, would you?" "Would you rather be brave and poor or cowardly and rich?" - all designed to get the teachers to think and move their brains in different directions.

One of the first people I saw at Cornerstone was Mission Africa's Lynsey Bell.  She goes once a week to help Emma (short for Emmanuel), a boy who was found abandoned in the bush a few years ago.  She works with children with special needs in Jos but goes to give Imo the one-to-one attention he needs.  He can't communicate very well and lacks most of the skills of a boy his age.  She suspects he's autistic which is probably why he was left to fend for himself from very young.

Before we went back to Bukuru Anne Karin had to visit one of the boys' boarding houses.  A supporter had paid for new beds so a photo had to be taken.  The boys all shouted happily that they loved their new beds.  The house "uncle"told us that he knew they were comfortable when all of the boys had to be woken up for school the first morning they had them. 

One of the quirks of life in Nigeria is the electricity supply.  Often when there's a storm the power goes off.  Sometimes it returns within a few hours, other times it's off for much longer.  It's going to be rather frustrating in the months to come as we expect a storm most days.  Last night we lost power just before 6pm, at 5:30am it still hasn't returned and the battery on my laptop is emptying so that will have to be all for now.