With Jacqueline gone at a teacher’s conference, the Nindis asked us to occupy the kids for the day with an English lesson, which somehow turned into a trip to the nearby mud pit to collect “clay”. The idea was to use the clay to teach the alphabet, but inevitably, when you combine a mud pit, thirteen little kids, and two supervisors who barely speak Swahili, the result is far from an organized lesson. As the more behaved kids, like Dominik, Daniel and Beatrice, used water and a huge machete to stir up the dry mud, some of the others strayed from the original purpose of the mini field trip. Faustina and Elizabeth managed to cover their entire faces with clay, and as lunchtime approached, even started to snack on it.
At one point, Charles attempted to pee on everyone, which prompted Rachel to chase him around with the machete. At first, we tried to use our broken Swahili to keep the kids under control, but we soon realized that, despite their age, they have had a lot more experience with machetes than we do and probably didn’t even need our supervision. All the kids keep each other in check, even Faustina, the youngest, carries around a small whip to punish troublemakers.
Elizabeth with a very muddy face
Wow, Machetes and mud! I guess you are not in kansas anymore. Kids and mud, ok , kids and machetes yikes! What a great experience.Doing alphabet in the mud is such a creative idea. Did you ever get to your lesson plan? What else are you doing with the kids?
ReplyDeleteWait whose idea was to use mud as a teaching aid? Elizabeth's so cute!
ReplyDelete