Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Super Sunday at Musana


On Sunday, we had a great day at Musana Children’s Home. Inspired throughout my life by my lovely sister Becca, and my mom especially, to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, I collected numerous water bottles my fellow housemates had used and discarded to be used as Plant Catchers. I had cut these large 1.5 and 500mL bottles in half, originally using the bottoms for another project: My Big Healthy Example Teeth. The bottoms of the bottles look exactly like molars once painted. I used another 20 or so to hold bottle caps we had collected from the Sol CafĂ©. I divided these caps up into their respective makes, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Mirinda and Fanta, Nile Gold and Club beers. These I will use later to delve into some more artistic expression. So I had a lot of top-half empty water bottles… oh what to do!



Plant Catchers:
Overturned and with careful placement of a good sized rock (something my mom used to do with her planters) to prevent the flow of soil and nutrients out when watered, we could make and hang these new lovely planters!

First, we had cut the bottles and made two holes opposite at the top where the string would be strung to be hung. Then, we had all the kids go and fetch appropriate sized rocks. This was all too easy, with numerous rocks of all shapes and sizes right outside the pavilion. The unexpected cacophony that resulted next was a bit difficult to drown out once they had these new music-making devices in hand. Luckily, we got them calmed down and distributed string and beads to be tied at the ends around the neck of the bottle and would hang off and dance in the breeze. We also distributed foam stickers that the kids carefully placed around the outside of the bottles. With the addition of their names, some soil, and a number of wildflower seeds (bought and brought from the US : / ? ) we had over 80 amazing plant catchers! Despite a few spills and thrills, the bottles these were hung outside the pavilion in clusters of 8-9. They look great and the kids loved doing them. Afterwards, they were pointing out to volunteers which bottle was theirs with nothing but pride and a sense of accomplishment. Easy enough if you ask me.



Girls’ Group
While the Plant Catchers environmental craft project was going, Andrea and I had our first girls’ group meeting. I had originally proposed this idea to Andrea and Sally when I first got here (a month ago in two days!). I really wanted to take and combine my previous work experiences and make a girls’ group to talk about healthy lifestyles and choices, personal growth, and developing a skillset to become healthy, productive and hopefully, independent women. Like I can’t praise them enough, my work throughout the years at the YMCA has really pulled through at the most random times. Now, I am using my work as a Y Teen Coordinator, teambuilding and managing to do activities and games with the girls. When we had started the Plant Catchers project, in order to get the kids calm and quiet, I used one of the easy crowd controllers, “If you can hear my voice, tap your head… If you can hear my voice, touch your nose…” without having to raise my voice once. Having taken a 3 day HIV/AIDS workshop with Peace Corps and using their LifeSkills Manual here, we are going to slowly move this group into talking and discussing some more serious issues they will be faced with as they grow into adulthood.


No comments:

Post a Comment