Bright Green and Colourfully Marked

When I woke up this morning I honestly felt like I was on cloud 9, you know when people are incredibly happy and they use this unusual term to describe what I imagine is their head in the clouds. Yip that one. Anyway back to the point is that I didn’t have a worry in the world and was exploding with excitement for the day ahead. Today was the day that all our creative inspirations and any strand of arty personality had to surface because we were finalising all the sketching with COLOURS!

Above that we also had to sketch one dedicated wall to “Things” that the village kiddies can relate to like hut, fish, boat, tomato, sun, football and the like (but I will elaborate on that another day). So we gathered all the material we needed including a ton of different colour paint tins and brushes and headed off in the car. Did I mention I was given the privilege of driving this huge 4x4 through the village to the nursery school…For those of you who know me pretty well I love cars and racing games so as I was driving through the dusty roads and most of the time sand, the car started drifting (sliding) to the sides and I imagined I was racing a little rally between the huts and village at a lightning speed of 30km/h. IT FELT AMAZING!

When we arrived the same beautiful little eager birds were ready for nursery school and today was all about days of the week and calendar months. The one volunteer suggested using a ball when a child needed to answer to keep their attention but most of all to keep them in the class with me and not in the classroom that was being painted….as you can imagine how exciting that must be for these dumplings to see a new class and all the activities going on in there. So after about 10 minutes I finally had all four in the class and decided to take a new approach of asking them how they are and they all answered “Bo”, which means good in Chichewa their local language.

I spent the next hour going through the days of the week and months of the year and it was incredibly fun and obviously not taught in the traditional way where the kiddies are on the carpet or at their desks taking part. No, it wasn’t at all…picture a session of throwing the ball from me to the child while they are going through the specific topic or better yet KICKING the ball to each other (this was the only way I could find to have the little boys full attention and he actually did pretty well – well it was the only way I got any information out of him). Yes, I am definitely in Africa and it is just a heap of fun and the four kiddies really practiced well and I think that they will now remember that Thursday is the day before Friday as they were skipping that completely in the beginning…I guess I will find out soon enough.

After nursery class I just about ran to the other classroom to see what had already been done and how much was left for me to help with. I could not wait to get to get my hands dirty so I started mixing colours to reach the those needed for the logo; needless to say within minutes my hands were covered in bright green. The logo for Kids2Us is the globe with Africa and figures around the top half holding hands. So as soon as I had the green and blue I jumped in to start painting…it was on the outside wall and a touch too high for me but I somehow managed to paint it reasonably well.

Next up were the dots for the numbers which we all worked on in a few bright colours and the shapes, which involved another colour concoction on my behalf to reach navy blue. Yes, I know sounds pretty simple to just add a touch of black to blue, which I got right BUT I was actually trying to get purple. Funny I know, but I didn’t take art at school and my acrylics at home have ALL the colours I need so it definitely was a bit of a DUH moment. By lunch time, and after all the concoctions I had made I really looked like Shrek…with a multi-coloured decal on my clothes. To top it off, I realised that I was the ONLY one with that amount of art on me. But it was totally worth it.

The sponsor of the classroom, her daughters name is Ella Grace

After all our grafting to get all 3 walls complete, the classroom looked stunning and we were all very happy with the outcome and how we had converted the room within 3 days to a nursery class.

Just to say that I won’t be able to save the last touch of material on my clothes…and I will be colourfully marked for always.