Blog #41 – C4C Continues

The last two days flew by – it was a whirlwind of energy, teaching and fun!

Tuesday was a little bit rough after all of the excitement and output on Monday – a lot like the second full day of working at camp. On Tuesday we ended up starting each session only a little bit late, which was great! We introduced the curriculum activity booklets today – which sound like a drag, but were actually really cool. We had designed them to have lots of pictures and only a few concentrated lessons. Also, considering that the cost of textbooks can sometimes be a barrier to education here, and that often times classes end up sharing a few books – providing every kid with a full colour booklet for them self was really well received!

One of my favourite memories of Tuesday was when I was waiting for my afternoon class to finish their activity in the booklet. I was getting impatient after being through this once in the morning and asked them if they wanted to play another game. The responded with a resounding, “No sir, we are not done our work yet!” I was shocked and impressed – it really contributed to my confidence in the future generation of students that would be coming through Botswana in the next decade.

Wednesday went very similar to Tuesday. One of the sadder stories from Wednesday has to do with the divide between the public and the private schools. We had put all of the new schools together in the morning session, and all of the returning schools in the afternoon. As such, we had all of the private schools (3) with the remainder being public schools in the afternoon session. There was apparently a lot of tension between the two groups.

The private school kids had all brought their own water bottles and water to drink, and the public school students were drinking from the bottles and water that we provided. Apparantly during one of the rest sessions a public school kid drank from a private school student’s bottle and the private school kid reacted saying, “He isn’t worth drinking my piss!”. To say the least we were shocked and dismayed. Luckily we managed to turn it into a “teachable” moment, but still the effect of his statement was a little haunting. It showed how much even the children here, value money and wealth – and that the divide isn’t necessarily by race or religion or even tribe, it is by economic class.

From that moment on we started integrating the private schools more concerted in with the public schools. When we did activities together we would pair one public and one private together. I found out later from Lesley that we are one of the only programs in all of Maun that have the public and the private schools interacting and playing together – normally they just stay within each other. On the same note, we are one of the only programs that integrates boys with girls and has both of them playing with each other and against each other. It made me really proud of what we were doing and what we were trying to demonstrate and achieve.

After Wednesday’s activities we decided to head back to Maun Lodge and eat and chill at the Boma Fire Pit & Restaurant. The Boma is a really neat place, all made of lataka and thatching, with palm trees, large carved wooden furniture and a huge fire in the middle of the outdoor restaurant to socialize and keep warm by. It was a really nice meal and we had some good conversation about international development work, intercultural affairs and the role that we play as external members of a community coming in to education and effect change. It was really entertaining, quite stimulating, evidently controversial and as always overly passionate :) There is no better way to wrap up your day!