Capture the flag

May 31, 2016

Today we woke up and went down for breakfast, but there weren't as many monkeys trying to steal our bananas. We started our trip to the school and hospitals at about ‪8:30‬. During the ride some of us talked and some of us listened to music and got in the zone! When we got to Malemia Primary School the kids followed the bus while yelling "alendo" which means visitors. As we got off the bus they wanted high fives and were very happy to see us! We were able to get one of the standard 5 teachers to translate for our capture the flag game rules. We were able to explain what the English meaning of the rules of the game meant, and he would write them in Chichewa for students to be able to read and understand better. We had broken up into two different groups to go and teach this game to the students. Abby, Emily, and I were one group, and we went around to Standard 2a, 3, 4, and 5a. Lindsay L., Lindsay J., and Rebecca were a group, and they went around to Standard 1, 2b, 5b, and 6/7.

Our first group went so well and the teacher was wonderful on translating and making sure the kids understood what they were going to be doing. For this game Emily was the main person that taught instruction in English, and Abby and I did demonstrations at the front of the classroom with pennies so they could see the two different colored teams. When we got outside to playing it took them a few games to get the hang of what we were doing and grasp all of the tagging rules, but overall it went very good. We were so happy with how they played. The other ages groups did very well too and we noticed it was harder with the larger classroom sizes. Sometimes we had about 50 vs. 50 which was a gigantic game of capture the flag. One thing that I loved was that when one team won they began to chant the phrase that meant "we have won" and the side that had lost would chant a phrase meaning "we have lost". So they were very competitive and we could tell that there was some fun trash talking going on too! They were also very respectful about winning and losing! Since standard 4 was getting vaccinations today, the two groups joined together to teach standards 6 and 7 the game! It was a lot of fun!

After school we walked to the government school in Malawi. There we got to order sodas if we wanted and we played a game that used marbles similar to a game we play called Mancala called "Bowa". Two of the men that were originally playing when we walked in helped us with the first few rounds we played and then we started to figure the idea of the game out. One man that worked at the bar helped us too when we needed it. They were great and it was fun! We got to see the new building for teachers that they had recently built that included a library, teachers lounge, assistant head teacher offices, storage room, and head teacher office. It was new and very nice!

Later we went to town to buy pumps and soccer balls to add to our game kits that we will be giving out at the end. Sammy took us to a fabric store too and they had some by beautiful patterns. Later when we got back to the lodge we walked next door to Lovess' house, who is the tailor! She is going to make all of us whatever we want from fabric we bought. She will be a busy lady, because there were about 10-12 people that placed orders with her today! We then ate dinner, did some planning, and started settling down for the night. It was a great day and I can't wait to do it all again!!