It feels as though we are settled in fully now, and its all starting to feel familiar and the norm. We have started to feel accustomed to the ways here - passing mud houses is just normal, as are the power cuts and hearing every child you pass ask “how are you?” However, now and again you look up and see an eagle circling above, or pass a guy on a bike carrying 8 mattresses on the back and you quickly remember how different it is to back home and how special it is to be here.
We feel a bit exhausted after the holiday club but it was well worth the work. We were in charge of organising all the games and activities for the week. The age group went from ages 4-20.. so we weren’t quite sure how it would all work! The three of us brainstormed together to come up with some new ways to have fun, use the resources we have and give the children a whole load of fun.
We decorated the headquarters with multicoloured bunting and put up balloons, we set the age groups in to teams and made a scoreboard. Monday morning at 8 am and we were ready to great all the excited children, but where were they? A few drizzled in at 9am , then at 10, ‘what time was this thing due to start?.. or had it already started?’ Finally, about 1pm, we began and it all seemed to go well from there. It all seemed very relaxed, sometimes things just didn’t happen and sometimes they just happened 4 hours late, like lunch, but you just learn to work around it and to be ready when you get the nod.
In our planning meeting we were told they respond well to wide games (big, exciting field games) “leave those to us” we said.. it was only on day two we realised we misunderstood and they had said “word games”.. no wonder the blank faces when we explained the rules of this long and complicated wide game we had made up. However, we were soon reassured by the shrieks of laughter and the buzz of excitement that filled the playing fields. Their only play normally is organised sports. We got the same blank faces, too, from the children when we told them about their craft activities. The concept of making something from nothing was difficult to explain when we pointed to a pile of mud and told them to transform that lump into a model of themselves. Again, we got there in the end and Jo Finlay had to remind herself of the slogan on the front of her sketch book ‘creativity takes courage’ (thanks for it lins - love itx). It certainly does here when people just think you are crazy. The craft they do here is all paper craft, if not just tracing, so 3D was a lot to take on…. but the results were great. All these amazing models came out of the clay and each one seemed so pleased with what they had made. The best thing was that this activity cost them nothing, just the clay they walk on (great idea Luce), the trees and for the 7 year old newspapers that had already been paid for. Oh well, it’s all a learning curve and just reminds us that you have to persevere on these things.
Many have said what a success the holiday club was and that this time it seems new and different.
At the end of the week the winning team were each awarded with a lollipop and then we let all the children come and get a prize. The boys and girls delightedly placed their little hands in the bags to pull out a treat, a punch ball, a yoyo, a little plastic flute, but, then mayhem filled the headquarters. The children all went charging around the field with their new toys. Everyday since then we think we have heard someone somewhere blowing on their little plastic flute.
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