Less, is more?

The past week was strange. For several days few kids showed up to the PM activities. ‘¿Dónde están tus compañeros? ¿Trabajando?’ – ‘¿Where are your schoolmates?¿Working?’ though the typical ‘saber’ is still the main answer many nodded in agreement, as to say their colleagues were working.
‘Yo también estoy trabajando’ - ‘ I am also working’ one told me when he randomly entered the room and didn’t want to stay for long. Education vs work that is a hard one to figure out around here.
Other days were better, on Thursday for example, there were many kids eager to play Uno and the smaller ones asked the ball to play outside. There was also a professions' soup letter going on and some hangman games.

The playground to the smaller ones!

The classroom for the bigger :) professions' soup letter!

In the morning I am disputed by several grades : ‘¿vas a venir con nosotros?’ - literally ‘will you come with us?’- meaning : ‘are you staying in our classroom today?’. For me, AM support is one of the moments where I feel Li Ch’utam's strongest 'magic'; being there and assisting the teachers when they have to deal with so many energetic kids.....

Here in Mercedes the parents decide when to have their kids entering school, so indeed there are grades but ages are all mixed, and that creates a certain disparity between learning rythms. 
Some kids are struggling to get number 8 right and others can easily count, write, and recognize numbers untill 28. All in the same classroom and grade. Grammar is another issue (spanish is their second language), with singular mixed with plural, feminine with masculine and ‘s’ for ‘c’, AM is one of the most tiring moments at school, but definitely definitely worth it!

As for the kitchen gardens projects there are some new families on board, whilst others stepped down and many boosted up their compromise. My heart gets warm every time we arrive to a kitchen garden where the compromise, effort and hope of that family can clearly be seen by the improvement and time they visibly dedicated to their garden. We also get disappointed with some families at times. But after all, the main is to offer the hand, tools, advice and motivation. The remaining is up to each family, and has long as one family tries hard, there is no reason for us not too.

Maria Victoria's kitchen garden 2

 

Maria Victoria's kitchen garden

Julio's kitchen garden

Julio's Kitchen garden 2

 













 Today on my way to one of the latest kitchen garden participant families’ place one of my little friends asked me:

'¿Felipa, adónde vas?' - ‘Felipa, where are you going?’
‘Hola amiguito, me voy a lo de Julio, a sacarme una foto de su huerto’- ‘Hi, little friend, I am going to Julio’s place to take a picture of his kitchen garden’;
‘¡Ah , si!, es que mi mamé también está interesada’-  ‘Oh yes! my mother is also interested in the project’ ;
‘Púes dile que proxima semana tenemos reunión el la escuela, martes 10 a las 15h30, que venga si quiere asesorarse’ –‘We will have a meeting at school on the project, next week, Thursday 10 at 15h30’.
‘Le voy a decir!’ – ‘I’ll tell her’.

So keep your eyes open, next week there are a lot of things going on and we’ll keep you posted!

Heat, rope jumping and Resilience

Finally the weather picked up with what we could expect for the season: it has been hot, sunny and even though we experienced heavy rain and power cuts last week it has been perfect weather for outdoor activities! 

As everyday the mornings are spent at school, currently being one I am assisting a different grade per day. Today it was the first grade and yesterday the second…..a lot of ‘la, le, li, lo, lu and ma, me, mi, mo, mu’.I didn’t know how heart melting and, simultaneously, exigent, was to teach little kids how to read and count. Even after re-explaining for half an hour the meaning of the letters in a word and that if there is an ‘M’ followed by an ‘I’ how do they sound together? If you know ‘M’ and if you know ‘I’…..then this little fellow, with half of his primary teeth missing, smiles while swinging his/her legs and says ‘LI!’…ok, not an ‘L’, it is an ‘M’...and we start all over again.

As for the afternoon activities we had Anne visiting for a couple of days, and she prooved to be a Mandala master, it was fun to see the kids colouring them but even more to draw it and having the kids giving it a try too! They were fascinated with her boyfriend, Martin. It is true they haven't seen a lot of male volunteers lately.

Martin and the kids

Mandalas in the making!

Mandalas

Last Friday the kids collected rocks on the way from the volunteers house to the school- yes, they came to ‘pick me up’.The rocks were  coloured for decorative purposes. It wasn’t that easy to find the best rocks to paint (egg-shaped and flat), but the kids worked it out. Once they had enough with it some asked to play UNO cards – that’s one popular game here – and this was how we’ve finalized the week.

 

Rock Painting 1

Rock Painting 2

Uno!

Yesterday we played ‘Riesgolandia’, a board game raising awareness regarding natural disasters, building up both preparedness and resilience, we still had time for some rope jumping after!

 

Riesgolandia :)

Today…. well, today some kind of community celebration took place.... so only a couple of kids came. The 'plan' was to play STOP – a word game and a great way to practise both writing skills and Spanish vocabulary – but mainly little ones came today, so no STOP….there was paper and pen, so they draw…..I tried to motivate them with an educational theme: ‘who is your favourite super hero, and why?’ Batman, Superman, and Spiderman are strangers over here, they just shrugged their shoulders and said ‘saber…’ the typical Guatemalan way of saying ‘who knows…’.So, no chance to have the little ones reflecting on bravery, courage, strength, intelligence….still they draw what their world is about: nature and family. Certainly, bravery, courage, strenght and intelligence can also be found there.

It is funny that over here the less you prepare and worry, the more activities work out. It’s not the disasters’ type of resilience but a different kind, maybe as useful as the first one…

We are cooking some manual activities for the next few days – though STOP and super heroes are still on the pipeline, for whenever there is a chance to do so…. Do not miss our Facebook updates!

See you soon and all the best from Nueva Mercedes.