Peace Corps: The hardest job you’ll ever
love.
That’s what they say. Sometimes it just
feels like the hardest job ever.
But in moments when you’re least
expecting it, it feels so incredibly worthwhile and rewarding.
Tuesday is art day. Danielle and I teach
four art classes to elementary school students at Kinders House de Banock. The
classes can be as big as 54 students, and two of them are directly following
recess periods - so the kiddos can get a little crazy. It’s exhausting and
sometimes I don’t enjoy it very much especially when it feels like they’re
ungrateful little brats. Madame, give me this! Madame, I want that!
But other times… Today, working with the
oldest class, we just handed out water colors and paint brushes, scissors and
construction paper. And we let them go crazy - in the best way. In the ensuing
near-silent thirty minutes, they painted flowers and soccer fields and circles
and stripes, they cut out lions and birds and footballers, and they created
some beautiful things. This might not sound impressive, but considering that
they’ve never had an art class or touched watercolors before this school year,
it was pretty wonderful.
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| So many colors! So much fun! |
These kids have come so far in terms of
behavior and creativity. They used to just stare at blank paper and ask, Madame
what should I do? Draw what? Where? How big? Or they just copied their
neighbors, who just copied us. Now they fill pages with their own colorful
ideas. Every class used to be a fight, a battle of wills. Now Danielle and I
are barely necessary - and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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| Look at that smile. |
The art classes have also brought us so
much laughter from the antics of children given freedom and safe spaces to
express themselves. Since day one, we have said over and over - “There are no
mistakes in art. We do not criticize in art class. There is no right or wrong.”
That has been the best decision. Late in the school year, we decided to
introduce them to poetry. With the younger classes, we hung up poems around the
room and told them to copy one and draw a picture about what the poem means to
them. One of them copied a poem about a stream and then drew a picture of a
lion colored in like the Cameroonian flag. If that poem says to them “Cameroon
flag lion,” who am I to say otherwise? With the older classes, we started them
off writing their own acrostic poems with their names to say something about
themselves Nino wrote my favorite:
Nigeria Nigeria
Immeuble Apartment
building
Nous We
Oignon Onion
(spelled wrong)
Their teacher came up to me after my last
class and told me: “Du courage. I want to thank you for what you’re
doing. The parents see what their kids are doing. These kids are great artists.
You might not have been able to give this school everything it needs, but you
are so willing. You give all of yourself. Thank you.”
Between those kids, those laughs, and
those words - so worth it.
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| Showing off our beautiful watercolor collages at school. |
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