day three

I just walked in the door from an exhausting day at Bonginkosi. I thought I had seen how crazy 96 children can be, but no, today I finally saw pandemonium at its finest. Today we started to implement some of our project ideas. One idea we had thought of was taking pictures of each of the kids, printing them out, making frames for them to color, and hanging each of their pictures around the classrooms. Our focus is on community. By hanging their pictures, they see that they are each an important part of the community established at the preschool.

Katie and I decided to take on this project. We finished the 25 older students in a very organized fashion. While we took one kid out of the classroom to take their picture, the rest of them were coloring bookmarks for their parents. We had a system down. We had a list of their names coordinating with their picture, we thought we were set. Next we had the other 71 younger students...try gaining control of 71 kids under the age of 4. It's impossible. Especially when you don't speak the same language. Nonetheless, regardless of the language barrier, Katie and I talked to them in normal English secretly hoping they would suddenly understand! It didn't work. It was seriously like trying to tame the circus. At one point, Katie and I each had 3 kids attached to us, one kid in the picture-taking chair who wouldn't move, at least 7 kids swarming the colored pencil tub which then exploded all over the table, and one kid fully on the table on all fours. All we needed was for someone to start eating the pencils shavings...oh wait, that did happen. Like I said, the circus. It was so funny, at some points in the afternoon I couldn't breathe from laughing so hard. By the grace of God though, we somehow took 90 pictures, had 90 corresponding names, and collected their bookmarks. It was a miracle! Only 6 kids were MIA, probably peeing off one of the play toys or too busy beating up their peer to notice it was their turn to have their picture taken. :)

We had planned to have a parent meeting this afternoon after the kids were picked up. We weren't sure if we would even have any parents show up, but we were hopeful. We had begun setting up for the meeting when we realized that our translator, Sipho, was nowhere to be found. We asked Zodwa if she could translate and she said no. It looked as though I was going to have to throw together a few Zulu sentences in efforts to introduce ourselves to the parents. Just as we were about to begin, a mother volunteered to be our translator. Answer to prayers! She was so sweet and was perfect at translating. The group still wanted me to try to speak to them in Zulu, so I managed a few sentences and gave them a great laugh. Our meeting blew all of our expectations out of the water! We had over 40 parents and siblings show up, fill out the questionnaire, and participate in the discussions we had planned. We were able to show them how they are a community brought together by their children, and how important it is for them to work together to better raise their kids. The meeting lasted about 45 minutes and went so well, we were so proud and thankful!

The day was exhausting, but mostly the good kind of exhausting. I feel like we took a huge step forward in accomplishing our goals today and I have a sense of peace regarding the situation. It's going to be hard and draining, but our engagement with the parents brought a sense of hope this afternoon.