Last Thursday night, during supper in the other volunteers apartment, Danielle said she was having a hard time with the preschool kids in the afternoons. She teaches Staci home school grade one in the mornings and then does about an hour and a half of preschool activities with the oldest of the toddlers at the baby home in the afternoons. She always has at least one other volunteer help her with the preschool but she said it still seemed like not enough help with seven very active kids (who I think are all under 3 years old). So I volunteered to help out on Friday afternoons. I get off work at 2 p.m. on Fridays and preschool starts at 3 so there is time for me to get a late lunch and tidy up my room a bit before going to help. Danielle gratefully accepted my offer and so on Friday at 3 I walked over to the preschool room and was greeted with mostly smiles and waves but also shrieks and wails from two of the boys, Bahati and Lazaro. Once all the kids were inside the school room, had taken off their shoes and put them in a large woven basket by the door and sat down in a circle, we sang some action songs, only interrupted by one child having to be taken to the time-out corner for a song. Then we tried to play Duck, Duck, Goose. That was interesting because most of the children didn't want to pick a goose so that they could just keep going around the circle saying, duck, duck, duck, duck... One little boy, Musa, couldn't actually even pronounce goose. He walked around the circle placing his hands on each head and saying, "duck, duck, duck........duck." We could tell he wanted to say goose, but as he paused, hands plastered to a squirming child's head, he couldn't form his chubby cheeks into the word goose. Daniella, Anika and I tried to hold in giggles, but it wasn't possible after the fifth time Danielle exclaimed, "Goose, Musa, goose. Say goose," and his response, ".........duck." Once the kids started getting up to wander around the room, we changed activities, playing with duplos for a bit before having some juice and water, going to the bathroom (the very most important part of preschool) and colouring. We ended the session by taking the kids outside to play with bubbles. Some of the younger kids wandered over to join in the fun, too. On the whole, I think the kids did pretty well on Friday. I've heard some days are much worse, once six of the seven were bawling for a good 20 minutes. When I came over for supper on Friday night, Danielle told me that it was so much better with three people in the classroom so I told her that I'll be there every Friday that I'm able. It was fun, even with the behviour hiccups, and now I know the names of seven more of the Cradle kids.
On Sunday I learned a few more names. Davona found me cutting up a pineapple in the kitchen and told me that at 3 p.m. she and some of the volunteers were going to take the toddlers to Rotterdam, a grocery store and restaurant in Usa River a few minutes drive down the road, and invited me to join them. I agreed to go, but almost thought I'd missed the chance when I heard a truck take off from the Cradle side of campus. Turns out it was some other truck and a few minutes later the volunteers, corralling 11 toddlers, marched by my cottage. I ran out to join the group and soon was piled into the Land Cruiser with two boys perched on my knees. Let me tell you, one driver plus seven full-sized volunteers plus eleven bouncing and energetic toddlers makes for an interesting five-minute drive. And a squished one. I tried to meet the new Cradle volunteer, Kessia, who just had arrived earlier that day, but there were too many kids in the way and so I tried again, with much more success, once we got to our destination. We got out at Rotterdam and found a nice corner of the yard to stretch out a quilt for the kids to sit on. Davona ordered plates of French fries (which came with complementary cole slaw...and not even forks for all those kids) and bottles of pop to share between every two kids. Then each of the volunteers grabbed two kids, the pop bottle and the plate and tried to divide the food and drink equally between the two. We tried to be even more multi-tasking by attempting to take pictures of the event as well. We all enjoyed the time away from campus and a few of the kids even took to showing their appreciation by dancing to the music playing over the speakers. I have no idea how it's possible, but every African kid I've seen so far has that innate ability to just move perfectly with the music. And these are tiny kids I'm talking about here. It's intriguing, as well as very amusing to witness! I did take a video to complement my many pictures. I'll try to put a few on tomorrow. And there you have it. My weekend in two non-similar blog posts.
2 comments:
That's why they say white people can't dance... :P
well, who knew that my newly graduated daughters would both be helping out in their mother's line of work in the next few months.
i am glad you get the chance to work with such interesting and enjoyable people... little ones are great!
I would love to see a picture of that full land rover.
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