Thabyekan Village

One day we met up with some friends from Australia who had come to Burma and we went together to donate some things to the school in my great grandmothers village. The biggest thing we did was pay for a new floor to put in the classrooms. There are so many of my relatives in that village I can’t remember their names. We also donated pencils, pens, sharpeners, school books, balls, cups, and some food. This is because around half of the kids are so poor that they can’t bring lunch to school. We paid for our relatives cooked heaps of fried noodles for all the kids, and they all got some soy milk and some sweet snacks. They were really happy and ate a lot. We also ate the same food. It was delicious. We took a bus organized by my mums friends, because we needed to bring many supplies to the village. On the way there we stopped at a market to get some steel cups and we looked around the market. Another place we stopped at was the pottery shop to get the water pots and stands for the classroom, and we looked at a furniture shop and ordered new desks and chairs for the school because the old ones were falling apart. Then we arrived and my mum told me that one of my cousins is in that school- he was very shy. I met the principal of the school as well as my great grandmothers younger sister who was very old. We waited until lunch time to give out everything. When we did it was the first bit of school was over by then we had given all the books out to the 550 students. We watched the kids walking home with their new books. Last year my mum and everyone else donated computers and a TV but they are not very good at using them to teach the kids. In the next few months my mum will visit there and train the teachers how to use that stuff to help teach the children different things. This kids were really happy to have some balls to play with at school. Many kids don’t have toys or books and they have to walk to school for almost an hour every morning and then again after school. In their spare time they have to help their parents on the farm or at the house.

After all that we went to my grandmas sisters house and she gave me and zaw zaw a ice cream. We cooled off a bit and then we left. When we go back we had dinner at a fancy restaurant called Monsoon with white table cloths and lots of waiters. Then we went to a shop called Pomelo and it had lots of art work like sculptures, paintings, handmade dolls, bags, dresses, and lots of colorful paper mache things too. Poor people learn to make the items in the shop and they can get a good income for that.