January 22, 2012

Today’s class was particularly rewarding as we are now getting to know the students better and they are becoming more comfortable with us.

We met Ronalle and a group of 10 vey excited students at the DNA office. All of the kids had attended our previous classes. We walked with them to the Island Waves Community center. The children were particularly energetic today. The boys ran ahead chasing each other and jumping over puddles and off curbs while the girls walked behind us shrieking and singing Michal Jackson songs. The ages ranged from 6 to 13. They all lived in the slums known as the Peas and the Mud and least 3 of them were orphans.

We learned from the last class that this group of children very interested in music so we decided to make musical instruments with them. We had them draw on paper plates with markers and then we glued them together and filled them with beans to make maracas. We showed them how to draw starburst designs and spirals on the plates.

Many of the students are not confident in their artistic ability and constantly ask us to draw things for them so the challenge is to show them how to draw what we are drawing so that they can do it themselves. Most of the girls and the more artistic boys got really into the project and focused on drawing intricate designs on the plates while 3 or 4 of the boys could not sit still for more that a few minutes at a time. For the last half hour of the hour and a half class I ended up doing yoga and gymnastics with the boys out side while Jackie helped the other kids hot glue their plates together.

One of the students, Jonathan, who is about 10 years old, particularly reminds me of me. He is constantly running around doing flips and cartwheels and picking flowers. Although his attention span is short, he followed my directions well and was able to reproduce some of the designs I showed him how to draw. Ronalle mentioned to me before class to help encourage him to go to school because he has not been attending regularly. I explained to him how important it is to go to school if he wants to play sports and do fun things. He started to really open up to me and told me that both his parents are dead.

Ronalle later explained that he lives with his 15 year old and 13 year old brother in a tiny room with just one bed in it. He says the room messy and strewn with dirty cloths because they have no shelves or storage spaces of any sort. We decided it would be great to raise some money to build them a bunk bed and some shelves and maybe give them some posters or a tapestry to put up.

When all the students had finished their maracas we fed them a much-appreciated snack of green apples carrots and peanut butter. All the kids left reluctantly but with huge smiles of their faces. We look forward to working with these kids again next weekend.