At the age of 13, Ruhi is a beautiful young woman. Instead of showing us her school marks, she produced a stack of photographs showing her at a school event – she looked gorgeous! She also proudly presented some hand-crafted items that she had made.

Her English skills are steadily improving.  Being that we had to ask her later in the visit about school and her marks, our suspicions had been aroused that she was not paying that much attention to this matter anymore.

We could not have been more wrong! Her marks were as high as they used to be and she explained the number 2 at the end of each term’s marks:  she had scored the second highest marks of the class. After a short pause, she added that the parents of the girl with the highest marks both work as teachers. According to the look on her face, a fact she found highly unfair!

We had gifted Ruhi with a laptop on our last visit and Michel had an e-mail account set up for her. We never received any e-mails. The excuse that the loading device had been broken and in repair for two months was lame. There were seven months without e-mails before that. At her IT class she had only been taught how to work with Word and Excel and she did not know how to send e-mails. This and the fact that she had written a card before Christmas to her sponsors asking about the well-being of their children (they have none) left a not unknown bad taste.   

Christine and Max had put a lot of love and work into an album showing the girl their life in Switzerland and Ruhi should have known better. But maybe having a sponsor in Switzerland is too abstract for the girl?  At her age and with her looks I would also have other things on my mind! We will talk with Christine and Max about the matter and decide on how to proceed. 

We gave Ruhi an envelope with Rs. 5,000 and wished her happy shopping.