A Day in the Life of a Volunteer for Help2Kids

 

June 26^th, 2013

I thought that now, since we have been here over a week already, I might give you a sense of a day in the life of a volunteer for Help2Kids in Malawi.  We get up at around 7:30 in time for breakfast, which is provided for us.  If we are lucky, Annette makes breadrolls, which are a cross between cake donuts and buns.  Then, at 8:30 we leave for Kazembe school, which theoretically has English classes starting at 8:40, but often we don’t really start until almost 9:00—this is Africa, after all.  We teach until around noon.  Here are some pictures of what the school looks like.  Standards 1 – 4 (grades 1 – 4) are in the open-air classrooms.  If you look closely, you will see two boys carrying bricks.  We will use these next week to build a new classroom block.  Finally, all my construction experience will be put to good use!

 

The older kids (Standards 5 – 8) have classes in the school blocks.  Here’s a shot of me teaching with Keenan and Zohair, two of the other volunteers from Help2Kids.  Teaching in Africa is really different from in Baltimore.  The children are very respectful, and they always rise as a group and greet you when you come in the classroom.  “Good morning sah (sir).  How are you sah?”  Usually the students will have their pens and notebooks, and they have to copy everything off the board, since they have no textbooks.  Generally we try to make things into games like hangman, but the kids come up with really funny, some might say random, names for their teams.  Here are a few examples: “team chocolate” (I guess they like chocolate???), “team Zili ndiwe” (team it’s up to you), and ESCOM (Electrical Supply Company of Malawi).  We can more or less get the kids to learn the lesson, but they don’t seem to review their notes very much, so I’m not sure how much they will retain.  Nonetheless, at least the kids here actually take notes!

 

Afterwards, we walk back to the Friendly Gecko for lunch, which is also provided.  Then we have a luxurious two and a half hour lunch break.  We usually go for a swim in the lake, take a nap, or just relax and think of ideas for English corner and kids’ corner, which are after school programs that we lead.  They start around 3:00 and last for about an hour.  Whenever we walk back from the activities, we are usually followed by children from the village.  Here’s a nice shot of Kim with some of them.

 

After the activities, we come back home again.  I usually swim and play ball with some of the kids from the village, and then Kim and I learn Chichewa from some of the children from school who are more fluent in English.

 

 

Since it is winter here, the sun goes down so early (around 5:30), so we are usually in bed by 9:30—especially when the power goes out, which is quite frequent.  In the evenings we chat or play cards with the other volunteers.  Currently we are writing and recording a rap for the Help2Kids website.  I will give you more details when we upload the video to the organization’s website.  So, this is a day in the life of a Help2Kids volunteer in Malawi.  It is so much fun—I wish we were here for longer than two months!