Martha's Placement

I can’t believe we’ve already been here for almost four weeks. The time has flown by, and it just reminds me that soon I will be back to sitting in class and wishing I was back in South Africa. Today was my last day at the crèche, and I was so sad to have to say goodbye to everyone. On Monday, I will start at one of the primary schools in Robertson.

For most of the time, I worked with the kids at the centre, which was right next to the crèche. It is for the older kids (around ages 5-14), and there is minimal supervision. They have a T.V., a pool table, and some other games and supplies. The centre/crèche is a place for all of the children of the farmworkers to go when their parents are working. All of the farmworkers and their children live right on the farm and are extremely poor so everything for the crèche is provided by the farm owners. Since I have been here, up until last Monday, all of the schools were on holiday for the World Cup. This meant that all of the children who were on the farm came to the crèche or the centre all day every day.

The first day that I got there, all of the kids found out that I could play soccer. From then on, I played A LOT of soccer! Since I had not brought a specific activity for that day, I saw what was probably a typical day for them. A couple kids played soccer, others held their own pool tournament, and then I played chutes and ladders many times with a bunch of the kids. From that I saw how bored I would have been as a ten year old playing chutes and ladders, so I decided to teach them as many activities as possible that they could do with what they had there.

I brought in an art project pretty much every day. At first, it was really hard to get them all to work on it, but there would be five or six kids who were really excited to do the art every day, and then everyone else would realize that it was fun, and they would come too. All of the kids really seemed to like crafts that involved cutting stuff out and gluing it on something. The first day, we made masks, which they decorated with ribbons and yarn and stuff. The next day, I had planned for them to put tape on paper in whatever pattern they wanted and then color over it and take the tape off. However, I accidentally bought double sided tape, which I realized as I was making my demo the night before. So, we ended up putting dirt on the tape instead¸ and they looked really great! Then we made “stained glass” out of waxed paper and tissue paper squares. After that, I just started bringing in all of the materials that I had previously brought, and they made whatever they wanted. They ended up getting very creative and using all sorts of things that they could find. One day, they all found flower petals to glue on their projects. Every day, we would hang up the art projects around the room. I think they really liked .

I also brought in some other activities too. One day, I brought in a jump rope, and they really enjoyed it when I brought in nail polish. Their most favorite thing, though, was the deck of cards that I brought in every day. Two of the kids LOVED playing, and I taught them a lot of games which we would play many times in a row every day. I taught them spit, Egyptian rat screw, B.S. (which I told them was called banana sandwiches), and revolution. It could be difficult to teach them each of the games, but I would show them exactly what they each had to do and then we might have a practice round. By far the funniest was teaching them banana sandwiches because it took a LONG time for them to figure out that they had to lie. They would say, “but I don’t have any sevens” and I would say, “then lay whatever you want down” and they would say, “two fives.” Every time that happened I would laugh so hard!

Most of the kids’ English was not fantastic, but that was certainly a lot of the reason I was there, so I talked to them as much as possible. I could definitely tell that it improved that at the very least, what they could understand increased as I spent more time there. Hopefully, this will help them now that they are back at school. I also think that teaching them all of the card games helped because they had to comprehend what I was saying.

I definitely had a hard time saying good-bye to the older kids as they went back to school on Tuesday, but I do think that I will be able to go back for at least a couple of afternoons when they will be there. Once they were gone, I stayed in the crèche all day with the littlest kids. They were probably from little babies to 4 years old or so. There were six or seven kids who I would play with, and while I certainly enjoyed them, I realized that that is not my favorite age group and not an age group that I handle very well at all. Of course, it was also probably more difficult because of the language barrier, but I found them exhausting, and it was very difficult for me to organize them into any sort of activity or even just keep them from fighting each other! Every once in a while, the Oumas who are in charge of the crèche would just have to come in and set them all straight. There was one horrible day where they all cried and jumped on top of me and “played” with my hair so much my scalp ached, etc. Oh well…we had our bad moments, but we had plenty of good ones too, and today, my last day was very good.

The Oumas at the crèche were incredibly nice and do a great job with the kids and everything else. In the mornings, they make all of the kids breakfast, and the younger kids change into sweaters and other clothes that the crèche has so that they can wash each of the children’s clothes. They also make them lunch every day. Sometimes, the Oumas would give me some of whatever they were having, and it was always delicious!

One of the biggest things that I have noticed is how every kid at the crèche (and I think that this is a cultural thing and not just at the crèche) knows how to take care of the kids that are younger than them. As soon as a kid can reach the handle of the stroller, they push the babies until they fall asleep. And if one of them would give me a baby, it was typical that when it started to cry, kids around 8 years old would be taking it out of my arms to comfort it. I think that the Oumas thought I was crazy because I had so little experience with babies. One day, they gave me a baby to feed, and it spit up all over my jacket whenever I burped it. I certainly have heard about feeding babies, but I have never done it all by myself, and I really was not quite sure on the particulars. I think that the Oumas thought that was very strange!!

It was so hard to say good-bye to all of the kids and the Oumas today. If I could, I would have just brought the whole place right to my back yard because they were so much fun, and I’m going to miss them so much!

Love,

Martha