Day 3 in Kibera : teens faced their first challenges

After two days to get adjusted and meet everyone, today was the start of our work with the children at Red Rose School. Everyone went in a classroom to teach the kids a subject of their choice.

Raphaele had the opportunity to teach some French songs to the youngest 3-6 years old in the courtyard. All in a circle they repeated after her: “Bonjour. Bonjour. Comment ca va? Je suis contente d’être ici avec tous mes petits amis…”. With repetition, they were able to learn the lyrics. Very cute introduction to Red Rose…

During this time, Dimitri was teaching French, Pierrick Geography, Malo Maths, Paul Mechanics and Alice Music. Many of them faced different challenges which could be very similar to the one any teachers from all over the world would encounter: focus of the students, disparity between them, the chatter boxes, the unruly,etc…they can now understand how difficult it is to teach! But one of the main challenge was that they were too ambitious in their preparation and had to readjust their lesson by improvising and adjusting to the kids. We all realized that we were talking to them sometimes about some stuff they have never heard about before and had difficulty to correlate. I encouraged them to follow the current news to be able to understand what’s going on outside the slum daily life.

We had an amazing time reading Charlotte’s web to the 9-10 years old in the library. This great classic contained so many topics which are familiar to the children. Fears, loneliness, tolerance and friendship issue…those are universal feelings. We can’t wait to see the drawing of the barn we asked them to create over the weekend. I asked the kids of my class to draw a utopia city after teaching them world geography and Paul a futuriste car in his physics class.

We then took the bus to have lunch in a local restaurant. Reggae Music was blasted and everyone is pushing you but it was so much fun. But nothing compares the motocycle ride that the boys took after lunch to go to soccer!

This afternoon while Alice was starting her ballet class which was a bit tricky as the leopards we brought had no skirts or legging and some of the girls were very shy to show their legs (cultural difference), Raphaele went to encounter the young mothers at Uweza Community Center and Marie met the students and teachers of the Photography Class I launched last year at Uweza.

Raphaele taught them how to make washable sanitary pads and diapers that they will be able to sell on the market. They made the patterns and tomorrow they will be taugh how to sew them with the sewing machine.

Nice discovery of the day on our way back : Chapati…which are a mix between Crêpes and Nâam. Miam! Just missing a bit of Nutella