A BIG day one

What a long day!  We started early, leaving for our service sites at 8am.  I know myself well enough by now that I prepared all of my things the night even to the extent of cutting up the peppers for my eggs.  Shadly, the driver, took us to House for our first day of service.  After some paperwork, we walked into the nursery and sixteen two to six year old attention-starved children clobbered seven students.  It was a zoo!  After a half hour of playing, which in actuality consisted of acting as a human jungle gym, Norma debriefed us a little as to our tasks and we followed the children to the play school.  We stood outside while the kids sang a morning prayer and did some counting exercises with the teacher.  There is only one teacher assigned to care for all sixteen kids including play time, snack, changing, and all of the other childcare tasks.  She has a big job!

When she sat the kids down for coloring, the teacher very sternly told them that if they ever want to go to school they must learn how to color in the lines.  The boy I was “helping” continually recited, “Color in the lines, color in the lines,” while he colored only outside the lines on a variety of pictures.  His artistic abilities earned him a disapproving look and snack dead last.  I guess we have something to work on.  One of the projects I would love to implement is a developmentally appropriate project for the younger children who cannot conceptualize coloring “in the lines” while the older ones practice pre-school-age appropriate tasks.  This would be a huge feat considering availability of resources and the lack of staff.  Not to mention, I don’t know if that is something the center even wants.  In any case I see potential for growth.  The potential for growth paired with the obvious love of attention from the volunteers assures me that the children will benefit from our service.  But Norma gave us a small piece of advice today in the debriefing in the bus.  She said, “She that waits in service is still serving.”  So, even if I feel at times that I am not doing anything or enough, doing whatever I’m asked, even if it doesn’t seem like a lot to me, is serving the organization.

The best part of the service was just getting to know the kids a little bit.  They wanted the attention so badly and they were so adorable it was easy to give, for the first two-and-a-half hours at least, haha.  They loved Legos, cars, toy guns, and stuffed animals just like kids in the US.  Of course there were some snotty noses and toy-stealing, but, in all, it was a fun time.  I shared with my fellow volunteers that I doubt I can sustain the same rate of activity with the little rascals for a whole semester (I know someone in the family who is much better at that, right Ali?).  But, there is hope to build endurance and even help out in other areas that need some attention.  I also wouldn’t object to spending some quality time with the youngest members of House, Shiloh and Sherman, five-month-old twins (girl and boy; respectively).  Although, Norma said that she was only able to get them both asleep for five minutes in the three hours that we were there.  She gets a strong grade for effort, but lacking on task completion, haha.

After three hours at House we had enough time to eat lunch back at the flats and walk to school (and get a little lost in the blistering heat) before our three-hour music night class.  Tonight we learned about Nguni music.  The Xhosa tribe is a division of Nguni.  We learned about the Xhosa instruments which are hunting bows played by plucking or by bowing a reed against the string.  Xhosa make use of overtones with the bows and their voices.  Some very talented Xhosa women can sing deep, guttural sounds and, through manipulation of their vocal chords, actually amplify the overtones, so they are essentially singing two tones at one time by isolating and amplifying different vibrations.  This type of singing was developed in Mongolia to imitate the sound of a mother camel calling her calf.  The culture of the camel herders is very animalistic, valuing the appearance, mannerisms, and sounds of animals as a way to connect with nature.  In addition to this two-toned singing, each Xhosa song includes music from the bow in two-count time and singing in three-counts with cannon-style repetition.  Singers can sing in one time and tap their feet in another baffling the Western ear and mind.  It is very complex, and surprising to most, there are no drums native to the Xhosa tribe because they are a nomadic cattle-herding people, and drums are cumbersome to travel with.

After class while walking home, we stopped at the grocery store and picked up Suvi, our Finnish friend.  We all treated ourselves to some Valentine’s Day chocolates (I got a white-chocolate with cookie pieces reminiscent of the four-wheeling days :D).  We eventually dragged our feet home “all the way home” and I made walnut and blue cheese salads and gnocchi with wilted spinach, pumpkin and cream sauce.  It was good, but quite heavy for such a hot day.  Suvi shared with us her adventures surfing at Jeffery’s Bay with her flatmates yesterday, and now we are all hitting the books.  Judging by home I’m feeling now, I will be getting up early to get my homework done. 

Nighty night.