This morning the
energy and excitement was somewhat bursting out of a few of us because the
school term began and the normal routine would once again be in place. Since I
arrived in December the schools have been on holiday and therefore the routine hasn’t
been as productive. So I was looking forward to seeing the daily runnings. Even
more so because my days are unfortunately coming to an end and I only have
three full days, including today, remaining in Lifuwu. So three of us started
off with the outreach program this morning, to a village we had not yet
visited. When we arrived and setup the scale the Mama’s came flowing in, which
was a pleasant surprise as most of the community in this area are currently
farming due to the rainy season. There were over 40 little dumplings between one
month and up to five years.
After the Mama’s sang
songs joyously, clapping their hands with big smiles they listened to a small
speech on health issues and the methods to take as precaution, such as malaria
which is more aggressive now with the heavy rains, from the Medical Assistant. Thereafter,
us three girls had our pens ready for jotting down the weight of the kiddies,
who were standing in a long queue with the Mama’s waiting to be weighed. In the
distance we saw a huge group of children at their school sitting with their
bright orange uniforms, and soon enough a few started making their way over to
see what was happening under the gigantic tree. The Mama’s and kids was one of
the largest groups in total I have yet seen on the outreach program.
It took us some time
to get through all the children being weighed and jotting down the figures
before the Medical Assistant moved over to the area where he gave vaccinations
to the babies. However, I was happy to see a few more babies coming towards us
on their Mama’s backs to be weighed because it meant that I could do the
honours. And as this would be my last outreach day I was able to have a shot
taken of weighing a baby the “African Way”.
One of the highlights
for us today, in this little village, was the huge group of children that had
come over from the school, of all ages. We started singing songs and dancing
like crazy people, jumping around, hands in the air, turning around and
carrying on. It was one of those moments that completely took us away and we embraced
the incredible interaction with these children. It really was a lot of fun!!! I
even managed to take a video of all these kiddies singing and doing a little
dance for us. In saying that this outreach day was probably the best and heaps
of fun and I am so blessed to leave it on a high note.
Next up on today’s
program was the after-school activities and the new volunteer, who arrived over
the weekend, and I were assigned to the younger children and nursery kids. So we
put our thinking caps on (sorry I mean Google) and found a few activities. This
was my first experience doing Arts and Crafts so I didn’t really know what to
expect and was a touch nervous to be honest due to language barrier and the
fact that not all of these kiddies knew us. BUT to my pleasant surprise it
instilled new hope in me about teaching. Along the way we collected a few
kiddies playing games and they followed us to the primary school, where the activities
are held. We had about 15 children of ALL ages…from three years up to ten years.
We started off with introductions and then moved on to our first activity,
which was creating a chicken / hen from outlines of your hands and foot and
then drawing a face.
After I explained the
task and handed out the materials, the kiddies got stuck right in it and the
other volunteer and I helped in outlining their feet and guiding them along the
way. The smile that I saw from each child after telling them “well done” or “that
looks great” was priceless and really sunk into my heart. This was totally
worth all the stressing! We then moved into a circle and played with flash
cards that had animals on it with music playing in the background; we were
playing “pass the parcel” with the flashcard and when the music stopped the
child had to guess the animal…and then came the sound effects. It was such a
joyous moment, heaps of laughter and we all had so much fun together. The kids
of all ages helped each other and learnt the English animal names and sounds.
Eventually we even had young adults as our audience, sitting and watching us
play the games.
That lead into us
singing Old Mac Donald (had a farm) and used the flash cards to prompt them and
then the hilarious sounds that came with it. Soon enough all the kiddies were
singing and dancing various songs in Chichewa and English. IT WAS FREAKING
AWESOME!!!
Today was such an
incredible success and super productive, and a day I loved from the word go.
AND I believe that these are the normal daily runnings…including nursery /
primary school in the mornings which is SO exciting. I have two more full days
of this and cannot wait…I won’t think of leaving and all the beautiful faces I
will miss right now, but embrace the next 48 hours with all I have!
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