Friday 23 September
Tomorrow is Heritage Day but since tomorrow is also a Saturday, the school celebrated Heritage Day today. The programme was supposed to start at 9 but it didn’t end up happening until 10:30 (typical). But it was worth the wait. The dancing and the singing was amazing. It was utter chaos though. They set up desks into a square and the stage kept on getting smaller and smaller because of the kids crowded into the square.
As soon as I got to school, I went and found my teachers. Normally we’re supposed to meet at noon but yesterday (Thursday) we found out about the presentation so I knew today was going to be chaotic and it was. But walking through the school was awesome because most of the learners were dressed up in traditional clothing. They even had paint on their faces. All of the volunteers got face painted as well. It was really cool and an amazing thing to see.
Anyways, next week is probably going to be more of the same chaos that I have been experiencing for the past couple of weeks. One teacher said she wasn’t sure what she was going to do next week. Another wasn’t even sure if she was going to be here. Luckily one actually knew what she was going to be doing: what she was supposed to be doing this week. And the other teacher was absent. I would say I was surprised by this but really I wasn’t. You certainly learn how to be flexible in an environment such as this.
Regardless, the programme truly was amazing and I can’t wait to look through all the different pictures people took. The coolest I think was when one of the teachers asked Matt and I to dance with the learners. It was so much fun. I absolutely love their dancing. They have this move which involves picking up one of your legs at a right angle and shaking it. It’s kinda hard to explain but I love it. I just think it’s so cool. We have been talking about starting a dance club at the school and Mel wants me to be in charge. I really just want to learn their dances to be perfectly honest. So I’m thinking that maybe we could start out by having them teach some of the volunteers some of their dances and then we can teach them some of ours. We’ll see how that goes.