After a hearty breakfast the group headed off to our local primary school on bicycles, which was fine in principal but very different in reality. Although not far it entailed cycling over the sandy road in very hot humid conditions. The result was that we arrived completely soaked in sweat (although the girls fared better than me) and entering the classroom looking dishevelled and distressed. Not the start I had been hoping for.
We were immediately separated and I was paired with Ines to classroom 2. This was a class of 5/6 year olds and numbered some 19 children all sitting in a semi circle on the floor. Within 5 minutes Ines and I were taking charge of the class and immediately realised that we could not speak a word of Swahili and the children could not speak English. We set about teaching them numbers up to 5 but realised they could all speak parrot fashion up to 20. We swiftly moved on the alphabet to discover the class in unison reciting an alphabet rhyme. At that stage we just went with our pictures of farm animals and did the best we could. This was much harder than we first feared and we will need to do a lot more planning for tomorrow and have some basic Swahili sentences up our sleeves. We are to take class 2 again.
The afternoon involved a cultural excursion around Jambiani including seeing the local seaweed farms, a visit to a traditional house and even meeting the local medicine man. Interesting but not too convincing.
Our group leaders joined us for dinner which was fine and a good meal was provided. As far as the hotel is concerned there is still no water, the number of bugs around seems to be on the increase, but I cannot complain too much as the day has been enlightening.
I hope to have email soon and have established that jamming the plug of the fan into the wall socket does seem to work so will have some relief tonight from the heat.
We were immediately separated and I was paired with Ines to classroom 2. This was a class of 5/6 year olds and numbered some 19 children all sitting in a semi circle on the floor. Within 5 minutes Ines and I were taking charge of the class and immediately realised that we could not speak a word of Swahili and the children could not speak English. We set about teaching them numbers up to 5 but realised they could all speak parrot fashion up to 20. We swiftly moved on the alphabet to discover the class in unison reciting an alphabet rhyme. At that stage we just went with our pictures of farm animals and did the best we could. This was much harder than we first feared and we will need to do a lot more planning for tomorrow and have some basic Swahili sentences up our sleeves. We are to take class 2 again.
The afternoon involved a cultural excursion around Jambiani including seeing the local seaweed farms, a visit to a traditional house and even meeting the local medicine man. Interesting but not too convincing.
Our group leaders joined us for dinner which was fine and a good meal was provided. As far as the hotel is concerned there is still no water, the number of bugs around seems to be on the increase, but I cannot complain too much as the day has been enlightening.
I hope to have email soon and have established that jamming the plug of the fan into the wall socket does seem to work so will have some relief tonight from the heat.
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