Due to start at 8am (which means arrive at 9am in Namibia) the groups of children, making up around 550 in total, began to arrive. A common way of transportation here is a 'backy'. Whenever I get a lift from my host family this is how I travel. It is essentially an open backed truck (pick up truck) and the passengers just sit on the edge of the trailer part – no belts or seats. Being groups of up to 80 kids at a time the backies they came in had a large fencing around, the kind of vehicle seen to carry sheep or pigs. Adults wouldn't be allowed to travel in these conditions in England, no doubt groups of 3 to 7 year olds.
Arriving dressed accordingly to their chosen themes, e.g. rainbow, doctors/nurses, Noah's Ark and cats, the kindergartens climbed up the arena style seating. Between each level of seating was a massive chasm, some with a drop as high as 7 feet. Shoes and bags became victim to these gaps throughout the day however the children themselves were fine (even if they did decide to follow their sandals down under the seating to get them back). Once all seated each group presented a little show – some did traditional dances, others songs. A couple did games such as a version of marco polo, an interesting choice of performance.
After all the performances had been 'watched' by the restless children they took part in the stations we put together. Parachute games, facepaint, marshmallows hanging from strings, tug of war and the one I was situated on, obstacle courses. This consisted of crawling under a net, stepping through tyres, balancing bean bags then dribbling balls around cones. Not speaking their language some parts weren’t understood. Not a single group dribbled the balls and just booted them instead. Often it resorted to me slapping bean bags on kids heads and letting them run around. Another group just wanted me to throw bean bags at them and let them chase after. However they all seemed to have fun with the activities.
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One volunteer, Gareth, got so frustrated with the non-English speaking children that he started saying "Look, at the end of the day this is for your benefit and not mine..." and continued to moan about their lack of cooperation with tug of war.
After all the activities disintigrated into madness they started lunch which we had packed the night before. The day went very well and we were all relieved it was finished – I have just submitted a small article to Mike, a Mehozetu worker, to pass on to national papers so hopefully a copy of that will be appearing on here soon with photos.
[Update: Here is the link to the news article.]
The work you're doing out there is incredible. I bet you feel like you're getting more out of it than they are sometimes. Hope it continues to go well, and the team won't get too frustrated with some of the chaos! I'm praying for you man.
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