Mery, Mery quite contrary. I don’t know why but that always sticks in my head when I am talking about or to Mery (pronounced Mary). She is of course nothing like the nursery rhyme song which has been largely equated to dark themes of torture. She is not even really like the definition: inclined to disagree or opposite in nature.

Mary is quite easy going, easy to smile and always enjoying life at school. She is the poster child for a normal Tanzanian child. She is commonly in a group of girls going to and from on the site. Somethimes running, sometimes just sitting and talking. Her grades are average for Tanzania and keep her in the middle of the Standard 2 class rankings (I mean the middle she is #10 of 20 almost every month).

As I mentioned, she is easy to smile. She normally has some version of a smile on her face. Sometimes geniune and sometimes a little more exaggerated for the photo.

I got to know the Mery behind the scenes a little bit last year when her mother gave birth to Mery’s little sister. Both the mother and father took three months off from work and went to stay with family in Moshi. Mery came and stayed with the headmaster at the time so she could continue at our school.

She immediately took on a role of being in charge of little Marco who proves to be too much of a handful for his parents a lot of the time. She dutifully walked him around the site all afternoon. She always had her basic genuine smile on her face while doing so. But when we talked she confessed she was looking forward to seeing her baby sister.

Mery loves to watch the videos that are part of the Reading with Barnabas Bear program. While she likes the reading videos, her favorites are of animals and singing videos.

She is one of the students I occasionally hear humming the Akili and Me theme song after having seen so many of them.

The first year we had the spelling competition she did really well competing to the end against the students from the grade above. Environment stumped her with the middle “n”. This last year she again went to the final rounds in her own grade, getting stumped on Examination and again having trouble with that middle “n”

One thing Mery did stand out in was being able to throw a frisbee. Most Tanzanian kids (maybe all kids I don’t know) want to throw them overhand regardless of how many times you show them how to sling one. The first year I was on site full time, I liked to crochet frisbees and try to get the kids working together to throw them back and forth. First she was one of the few who could throw one and second they only want to try and throw with me not each other. Still she gets to lay claim on first frisbee thrower in Kiruani.

Last year we got a donation of supplies for art work and all the Standard students got to work on drawing things in pencil which I scanned in with their picture. This was Mery’s final attempt. The subject matter ws given to her by the teacher.

Drawing type art is not really in my wheelhouse, but we are encouraging as much art time as I can get in on the teachers. Unlocking the creative side often helps with logic side of things.

For those concerned about my comment of Standard students above, we gave the pre-school age kids a ton of crayons that year and let them loose on their own.