Interns/Volunteers in South Africa!

Christina and Emma’s South Africa Adventures! WK5

September 13, 2009 on 1:03 am | In Christina and Emma's South Africa Adventures! | No Comments

Hi everyone!

One of the highlights from our three days at Randfontein Primary was having some groups of third graders to act out The Three Little Pigs. They started out by reading and discussing the story, then wrote their own scripts for the performances. They were really cute. Working with the slightly older kids is a lot of fun, because we can go beyond the basic reading skills to do more creative assignments. One of the kids in Christina’s group was obsessed with Michael Jackson and wouldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time before getting up to dance–he even tried the moonwalk. He also said he wanted to grow up and be like John Travolta and have a private jet.

We continued to work with groups in the library at Zuurbekom on Thursday. Sadly, our day ended a little bit early, because the school was holding a memorial service for a child who had been hit by a train on the way to school. The schools in the area seem to be far too accustomed to dealing with tragic events like that. In the time we had, we continued to introduce them to the basic set up of the library (i.e., fiction, non-fiction, encyclopedias, etc.) with the hopes of getting them interested in at least one type of resource that the library has to offer. Kids got really excited looking at books on everything from the solar system to animals to superheroes. We talked to the principal and will be setting up a system for the students to check out books, starting next week.

One of the groups we had was a group of 25 third-grade boys. That was challenging, to say the least! They had a lot of fun trying to drive us crazy. A few minutes before the end of the day, we had basically reached our breaking points, and were yelling at the kids to sit down and listen. All of the sudden, they all broke into a song, the lyrics of which go like: “Thank you, well done, keep it up, shine, shine like the sun!” We couldn’t help but to burst out laughing.

On Friday, we visited Thabisile. It was the last day of “Literacy Week,” so there was a school-wide assembly. Kids from each grade presented in some form, with the youngest kids saying the alphabet, slightly older ones reading (both books from class and stories they wrote themselves), and the oldest ones debating if boys or girls were better (there was some very interesting rationale in that one!). But overall, it was really good to see teachers, parents, and students come together to celebrate the kids’ accomplishments.

We also had a good weekend, going to a different part of Joburg after school on Friday, the Lesedi Cultural Village on Saturday (where you learn about South Africa’s tribal history, then finish with a huge buffet of Pan-African food–including crocodile!), and a Thai Festival today (we realize the irony).

We forgot to mention that we are now used to the constant sound of mooing. Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night, the cows sound a little distressed. We don’t really know why.