The great thing about Toby's project is that it doesn't (always) end with a one-off letter exchange. Yesterday, Toby walked in on the news, in particular, an item about the floods in Karthoum. "We've written to Karthoum!", he says, "Are they okay?" Thankfully, although we rely on letters for Toby's part of the exchange, arranging the contacts has meant that we do have email addresses for many of Toby's writing partners, and so, this morning, I could tell him the following:
"Many people lost their homes and their possessions. The great thing in Khartoum is that people help each other a lot. Even if you have very little space families will make space for their relatives and they will be given food. In comparison to England perhaps because the government isn't always very organised, people are quite a lot better at helping each other."
Yes, of course we could Google, but for us, every country in the world will forever have a personal name attached to it, somebody at the other end of the letter - I hadn't anticipated this when Toby started the project. Every country he hears about, Toby asks "who did we write to there? Were they close to x [insert disaster/celebration]?" And, more often than not "can we write to somebody else there?" I'm beginning to think this project will never end...and I'm not complaining!
[Photo taken from "Nafeer Sudan" on Flickr, under Creatve Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99881011@N08/]
"Many people lost their homes and their possessions. The great thing in Khartoum is that people help each other a lot. Even if you have very little space families will make space for their relatives and they will be given food. In comparison to England perhaps because the government isn't always very organised, people are quite a lot better at helping each other."
Yes, of course we could Google, but for us, every country in the world will forever have a personal name attached to it, somebody at the other end of the letter - I hadn't anticipated this when Toby started the project. Every country he hears about, Toby asks "who did we write to there? Were they close to x [insert disaster/celebration]?" And, more often than not "can we write to somebody else there?" I'm beginning to think this project will never end...and I'm not complaining!
[Photo taken from "Nafeer Sudan" on Flickr, under Creatve Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99881011@N08/]
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