Save Sandy Salmon

And the world spins madly on. October 26, 2011. I write homework in each child's tattered notebooks, and recognize their handwriting. Each backpack has a significance to me now, many imported from Korea, some new, most old and worn, passed down from sister to brother to brother. I correct the painstaking answers, penciled in dark marks, work erased to leave a clear number, surrounded by rubber marks, the traces of effort. I write the next letter in the alphabet twenty-eight times, and redraw hundreds of lines down pages. I rejoice in their successes, in the sounding of words, the one hundreds on a quiz taken today. I also feel their embarrassment in walking up sheepishly to the opaque chalkboard, avoiding eye contact, not knowing now to write "eight". (This proves to be the most difficult number to spell.) Fedisiana failed the quiz today, a 2 out of 16, and cried before she handed in her paper. Sarah finished within thirty seconds, check mark after each. Queen finished shortly after. She is one of the brightest, but so eager to be first that she rushes though, accidentally writing 17 instead of 71. Samir, cunning and difficult yet somehow most endearing, with a closed mouth smile and shining eyes, held up his hand quietly, and I collected his perfect paper. Irene Melissa, built like an underdeveloped mother with different sweaters every day, asked my approval. I said, good, very good, bending down over the sturdy and worn knee high wooden desks. Eustance, Ester, Robine, all the top of their class. The girls grab my hand when I help them with answers, the boys hide their smiles. Aika placed all the struggling students in the last three tables, so they would not be tempted to cheat. Yet cheat they did, pretending to grab for the shared eraser while scouring the paper next to them for hope of help. Turning their colored plastic chairs away from the two teachers, they whisper. Aika scolds them in Swahili. Diana, one of the worst culprits, is moved to work at the teacher desk. She is Western looking in her facial features, with caramel skin and long limbs she doesn't know how to carry. Gilbert, Bashir, and Denis look at me with saucer eyes, seeing only blanks on the photocopied workbook page. All friends, they are the bottom of the class and follow Brian and Samir's rule on the playground. Denis is the darkest in the class, tall, and bound to be handsome. He is soft-spoken and reserved and carries a darkblue cloth satchel instead of a backpack. Gilbert is thin, with a small mouth and big eyes. He sits in the back of the class, in front of the fruits and vegetables and the "wild animals" poster. Bashir, out of class my first two weeks at placement, wears orange Halloween socks and hunches, his drawn face and mooning eyes looking at the ground. He picks at spots of grass alone when the children go out to play. 
I can see myself in this age still, can understand their sorrow at being left out of the swinging, the urge to be the top of the class, the crushes on boys sitting across the room. I can see it all, from my view four feet higher. I can feel the blush across my cheeks when they fall off swing sets, the pinky swears and the singing of nursery rhymes and the love for my teacher. The quickening of the heart before taking up the chalk at the board. The pride at finishing a drawing, and having someone praise you for it. 
I can't understand their words, but in many ways, I don't need to. I wish I knew more Swahili, if just to be able to catch their passing comments, funny and silly and insightful, I imagine, but most importantly, to be able to impart even a little of the love and hope I hold for all of them.