annie in swaziland: "Bye Teachers!"

Today Kait and Katy are leaving us. It will only be me and Sydney for the next 4 days until the final GHFP Service-learning team arrives on Sunday. I cannot believe time has flown by so quickly! We are almost done implementing our Summer 2013 programs and have started working with our local partners to devise plans for our November and December programming. When we met with the eLangeni Chief, she said that she has been exceptionally pleased with our partnerships at the primary and secondary schools and asked us to consider assisting at the pre-school. As soon as Katy heard “pre-school” her eyes started twinkling at the thought of little munchkins and we immediately scheduled an appointment with Nelly the headteacher. As we were standing outside, we heard 55 tiny little-people voices chanting their numbers and ABCs in English. Too cute! I open the door and we hear “Hello Teachers” in unison coming from the tiniest brightest smiles I have ever seen. It was love at first sight. The kids performed plays from the bible and were so excited that they shouted their lines at an ear piercing level. My eardrums were wondering how that level of sound could come from such a small human being. The girls and I giggled through the entire event. At one point they were doing a story about Solomon and these little girls pretending to be at a bar yelled “We must go home now, we are TOO drunk!” Imagine that coming at you in the loudest, highest pitched voices possible from two absolutely adorable 4 year olds. We lost it. They then did a play on AIDS that was hard to bear. I am hoping the kids were just reciting the lines and didn’t know the meaning of their loud high-pitched English words as the play talked about how everyone in Swaziland is dying and how the children even lost their parents to this disease. They then had 3 little children who pretended to be positive (although a lot of the pre-schoolers actually were) and in the play they illustrated how other children refused to be friends with them due to their status. The kids here have to grow up far too soon – it’s just not fair.

Afterward, we handed out snacks of Simba chips and oranges. The kids had orange peels everywhere. And their sticky fingers – of course – made it immediately to our hair. I am not sure if my hair became more nappy from the knots they were tying it in or the fact that my hair was now sticking together in clumps from the orange juice. Either way, it was time to play a different game. We went outside and they taught us their rendition of duck-duck-goose. Kait was the first one picked to run, however, here in Swaziland you are supposed to run the opposite way from your tagger. She ended up having to run two laps around the children as they all yelled “Run teacher run!” Then it was my turn. I am all about letting the kiddos win – plus I was in flip flops and a skirt – but I should have used Kait’s technique of selecting the shortest fattest child as my little boy was FAST! I knew I didn’t want to have to run two laps around so I kicked it into high gear and ended up kicking his butt. When we were leaving, we promised to return soon. Getting 55 little hugs is a great way to start your morning. And hearing “bye teachers” from the most adorable little munchkins only makes you crave the next “hello teachers” in the future.

*If you'd like to help our pre-school, we are requesting school supplies, toys, stuffed animals, workbooks, and of course financial donations: http://www.ifightpoverty.org/donate.html