“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

^{Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut}

Now let me tell you about the afternoon community projects in Livingstone.

So much fun with the kids, but again I didn’t have the chance to really get to bond with any, with trying to fit in all the projects into the 2 week period; such a shame. I spent 2 afternoons doing reading club at Dumbwa and Maramba Schools, 3 others, doing arts and crafts at Zambezi Sawmills, Nakatindi and Natebe Schools, along with an afternoon, near the Maramba Clinic, doing adult reading club for folks wanting to learn, or advance their English skills.

Because the schools are so basic, with not much inside, the sound reverberates terribly and it sounds like total chaos within. The desk are a wooden bench, usually seating at least 3 children, with another piece of wood for the top, which in most cases, is not screwed to the base and so consequently they would be fall off, causing even more cacophonous of noise…deafening at times; which you can tell by listening to this little video.

the school kitchen

We also found at a couple of the schools, afternoon meals of Shima ( a corn meal porridge type substance)were been served to the children, whether this was their lunch or after school dinner, I'm not sure. Also of note, most classes were broken into 2 sessions, morning and afternoon. Not like ours where children break for lunch and attend the rest of their afternoon classes, here there are just TOO many children and consequently 1/2 attend morning sessions, the other 1/2 the afternoon sessions.

Reading Club consisted of packing up a selection of books from the very SMALL library, at the volunteer resource room and hauling it to the school, where they would be laid out for the children to pick from. All books have a colour coded sticker to tell what level of reading they are for.

I found most of the children could read to a certain degree, but did not really understand what they were reading! They are taught English by mimicking sounds without really understanding what the words mean. If you would write a simple word on the blackboard, a few could say what the word was, but after a few minutes, everyone would have forgotten and you would have to start the process over. I think they were more than happy to just have some attention paid them, any attention. They certainly don’t receive any one on one interaction with the teachers, (of note, capital punishment is still used regularly at the schools) nor do I think they get much at home; there is to much work to do, once they get home from school, so it is a major thrill for them to have these visitors come and spend some ‘quality’ time. I think it must be hard too, for them to try and comprehend what is trying to be taught by the volunteers, as there a multitude of different accents they have to try and decipher, all English, but with different accents, so different pronunciations to the same words - Norwegian, German, Icelandic, British, Canadian, Australian, Dutch. But to have you actually sit down with 3 or four of them and have them read to you was something they would almost fight for the chance to participate in.

Art Club, was something else again. For my first foray, I was told I had Art Club that afternoon. What fun, I thought, I love art projects…”what are we working on?” “You have to come up with something for them to do, yourself”. Say what!!! This was with about a half hour notice (see, the rest of the group that had been there longer, would arrive for lunch, eat, then they would all fall onto the couch in the living room and turn on a movie, not seeming to care what they would do with the kids, leaving it till the last 5 minutes before it was time to leave and figuring they could just let them draw something). Being my first excursion for this, I followed their lead to see how it would go. So, for this first session we made some suggestions about drawing, I would say “I want to see an elephant”, and so they would all draw elephants, “how about a picture of you home?” with the same result. There were actually some pretty amazing pictures.

I should mention these children would range in age from very young up to teenagers. Well, when it came to the next art/craft day, that attitude wouldn’t work for me, so I immediately found the Internet school site that I have often used with the grand kids, that gives ideas of art projects. Not having much time and little resources to use I came up with the idea of having them make balloon people.

Most have never, or seldom used scissors to cut things out, so this idea would help them learn to use some of the equipment and see how well they could understand directions. Lots of help was needed here, but they were all extremely pleased with their results, and couldn’t believe that they actually were allowed to keep the project and take it home. For the next school art project I came up with the idea of making butterflies. My first thought had been to make puppets from brown paper lunch bags. Who would of thought that such things were not available in Zambia!I knew paper was expensive and sometimes in short supply, but had never thought that I wouldn't be able to purchase paper bags at the store. So, ther was no craft paper in the supply cupboard for either of these ideas and I had to run down to the store during lunch to purcahse what supplies I thought I would need. fIt had started to pour with rain, a torrential down pour! I slipped on my gumby boots and rain jacket to head over to out. OMG! The rain was so intense that the road outside Backpackers was actually like a running river (I now know how these countries have such major floods and washout conditions)! Things floating by (lord only knows what some of the things were) and it was difficult in spots to keep your footing; but really it was kind of fun, playing in stream of water, just like an over grown kid again By the time I had done my shopping and was heading back, the rain had subsided and all was once again dry…amazing!

They would have to draw around their hands, cut out the shapes then glue they hands (wings) to the butterfly body. We supplied stickers and foamies for them to glue on and add some extra fun to their beautiful butterflies. I was also told that the felt pens were running out, so to make sure to get the caps back on them. I queried if anyone had actually taken the time to explain to the kids that if they did not look after the equipment, put lids back on felts, put away scissors, cap the glues, that they wouldn’t have the equipment to use for long, because it would all dry out and not be usable again…”well, No”…duh. It was certainly one of the first things I had Yuyi explain to them when we arrived, and wouldn’t you know, everything was put away properly at the end of the day. The children loved these colourful creations and were again ecstatic to be able to take them home to show their parents!

beautiful butterflies

The adult reading class, I again felt left a lot to be desired. The only books available for these adults were the same ones we used for the children, which seemed almost belittling for them. Flash cards with half the cards missing, baby books for the beginners, surely there must be more mature learn to read books, available somewhere, that would help to make these folks feel more confident. This was again another project where you where rather left to your own devices to come up with what you wanted to teach. Not having done it before, I was unsure of where their level of reading was at, so felt pretty inessential in my ability to help at that project.

All in all, though, these projects with the children were highlights of the days. So much love shared by the children and adults alike for the small effort on my part.

AND, what could make you feel better than when you are loaded up and ready to head out after the afternoon projects, Yuyi would beep the horn, and the children would chase the bus out of the school yard...like this!

When the bus came to pick up all the volunteers from a project/activity all the kids would chant "M'zungu Bus!" and run after the van.

Mzungu means "white or rich person" so they all referred to us as m'zungus and the van we arrived/departed in was the "mzungu bus".