Pollopps Of The Brain
Ngwenya
Sister Frances has done it , convinced me to give a hand to teachers of kindergarten Ngwenya. not having made a great effort: after being there with her and seeing those 75 pairs of eyes looking at me curiously, and those 75 mouths that are open at once to shout at me "Good morning. How are you?" I told myself that this could be an experience for me very enriching and at the same time a challenge
. And now, because it is one thing to be a psychologist in kindergarten as those in which I worked for years in the suburbs "good" in Milan. Another consideration is the poor outskirts of Livingstone: it is not to the psychologist, here is the creativity that is put into operation.
The nursery has been built with the help of a group of Japanese students who, after seeing the children and teachers who made lessons under a tree, have been busy with a fundraiser that allowed the construction of the building . Ngwenya is one of the poorest areas of Livingstone. The predominant occupation of the inhabitants consists of the extraction and processing of stone.
scenario that presents itself has something of biblical men, women and children squatting on the floor with piles of stone that is split into pieces of various sizes, abbarbiccati other men on the back of the quarry that is presented in a vertical wall headlong into the valley. Anyway: that's where we bought three truckloads of stones to pave the Graziella's garden. Less than a year living conditions have improved since a large part of the compound reaches the electricity and water even if the morbidity and mortality have a high rate. Even the standard of living of the families has recently been improved: the houses of mud and straw were gradually replaced by brick houses with tin roof.
One of the most important problems, however, the fact remains that because the death rate very high, if the parents die are often grandparents or relatives or even neighbors who do provide care for children and this implies 'inability to provide food for everyone. There are families with 8 / 10 children. The school has no electricity or water: they are the relatives who take measures to bring the tanks for everyday use. The building consists of two classes a tiny office overlooking a playground of modest size. Children can get to school quite easily because it is a few hundred meters from the main town that surrounds the quarry. The school day currently from 7.30 to 12. Children come after breakfast (but for this the teachers have doubts: not many people who eat something in the morning) and start teaching.
The final schedule will be from 7.30 to 16, but this only happens when you get an additional contribution of donors. In this way the school can provide for the lunch with the purchase of flour for Inshima (which is identical to that make white polenta in Veneto), beans, the Kapenta (which are kind of our little fish anchovies. Are caught in the lake and Kafue are dried). Families will provide to carry vegetables. The budget to provide lunch to 75 children for one month is the equivalent of 180 €. Yes, you read that right: 180 € with about 1650 meals are prepared. This means that every time I go to eat pizza from Tosi in Venice is as if consumed 200 meals at Ngwenya.
And Tosi is absolutely convenient. So much for the environmental coordinator. And hence the task of inventing educational activities which take account of oversupply, the lack of material, the heterogeneity of children (3 to 7 years, belonging to three ethnic groups that speak different languages, the issues related to survival. The imagination au pouvoir!
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