Day 4 (Court and Finally working with the Kids)

Today we had to wake up earlier than usual, because we had to be down at the courthouse to acquire the materials that the chief magistrate recommended for us. We had to review issues about child custody and marital property because these are evidently big issues in the Mtongwe community where we are working. The records at the courthouse were not digitized, so we spent a lot of time thumbing through books, old court records, and making copies. This lasted for about half the day and then we were finally on our way to the school for the first time.

We sat down and met with all of the teachers at the school and told them about our project and how we needed their help to facilitate our efforts. They were all very receptive and seemed very excited about our presence and the program that we plan to implement. After the meeting, we finally got to meet with all of the children. We started off with an icebreaker with virtually the whole school. The students taught us one of their local song/games that has one person in the middle of a huge circle, who sings and calls out the next person to the middle. The person who has been called out has to dance to the middle of the circle and restart the song. After a few iterations of the game, we got all of the older kids together in their classroom and started our curriculum.

Pedro really took the lead, and had the great idea of making our curriculum adversarial. This worked out great because the children like to compete. We presented hypothetical situations to bring about ideas on freedom of expression and a right to education. We then had the students do critical thinking exercises about the arguments for these rights and why these rights might be abridged. Time went by really fast and before we knew it, it was 5:30 in the evening and we had to stop. Ultimately, I feel like the kids left with a better understanding of what their rights were, why they are important, and an understanding that there are challenges, such as limited resources, which could hinder their rights, if they don’t stand for those things they truly believe.

Now we are just reviewing materials and preparing for our big training session with the women’s rights organization. We are eager to do the training tomorrow and will be sure to post on how it goes.