My second week at the kindergarten went well. The kids really seem to be learning the information we’re teaching which is always encouraging. They’ve learned to say and identify the parts of the body in English as well as numbers 1-10. It’s very interesting how different these kids are from the kids I taught in Tanzania. While I have definitely connected with them on some level, they seem more hesitant to trust me than I expected. In TZ, the kids immediately wanted to get to know me, play with me, and interact as much as possible. Here, the kids are much more aloof and with only one more week left with them, I really hope I can make a better connection. I’ve also noticed that the kids here are much more violent. I know boys will be boys, they’ll wrestle and play rough no matter what – but even the girls hit each other and have even tried to hit myself or Ericka when they don’t get their way (i.e. letting them run out into the street.) The last couple of days we have noticed that they try to push the envelope and think it’s funny to do things when we tell them not to. In turn, we’ve decided to just ignore them and they immediately stop having gotten no reaction out of us. Most of the problems we’re having would end up solving themselves if we were able to stay longer and I’m sad I won’t be able to see them grow and learn beyond next week. Another issue we have at the school is hygiene. It’s actually pretty heinous. The biggest problem is the “bathroom”/”toilet”, and by “bathroom” I mean the corner of the classroom and by “toilet” I mean a bucket. Luckily, a group of CCS volunteers that have been here for a while have put together a personal hygiene presentation for kids and we’ve asked them to come in this week and teach the kids how to wash their hands, brush their teeth, and with any luck we can get rid of this toilet/bucket situation!
On a happier note, they LOVE arts and crafts time. On Friday, we made sock puppets which were a huge hit! Ericka and I spent approx. 2 hours gluing tiny eyes onto socks that may or may not have been clean. The kids had a blast though!
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