Shila Travels: A fun fair, a birthday party, and lots of learning!

Hey friends!

I hope everyone had a lovely, lovely weekend! It's Sunday night, the usual time I sit down and do a blog post, but I don't think I'll be able to post this until Tueday. I'm so used to not having internet now, it's going to be such a crazy thing to always be connected when I'm back!

Another week has passed, and as per usual, it was anything but boring! There's lots of new stuff happening these days!

So, the low down at work these days:

- We're now waiting for approval for the research proposal. Fingers crossed, we want to get the interviews going ASAP! It feels pretty great to have the proposal completed- it was a little mind-numbing for a while there

- Our lovely friend Julia has returned to Utah! We're SO sad to see her go, where did the month go?! Before she left, she gave us a presentation on the psychosocial assessments she has been doing, and MAN, she had some SUPER interesting stuff to tell us. She was assessing our kids on a TON of factors, measuring everything from cognitive ability to psychological wellbeing to spatial awareness to depression to anxiety to perceived control and support. It was fantastic to know that the majority of the kids feel safe and cared for at Stepping Stones www.steppingstonesintl.org), but it was also heartbreaking to hear that for some of them, Stepping Stones is the ONLY place they feel safe and cared for. Julia also spent a lot of time highlighting the challenges these kids face when it comes to simple tasks like focusing, and urged us to reconsider the way that we understand the kids who misbehave. It's easy to sum it up as a cry for attention, but she was explaining that it's often deeper than that. For some of the kids, it's a much more desirable option to act out than it is to be singled out as the kid who doesn't know HOW to do an activity. When certain kids have cognitive challenges, it's very embarrassing and shameful to be unable to complete the tasks at hand. Her presentation ROCKED and it's powerful that we now know the individual strengths and challenges of each kid. She also equipped us with all kinds of creative ways to improve our teaching methods. It was AWESOME! Thanks Julia, you rock!

Trying to walk the line using binoculars- an activity to demonstrate the cognitive challenges our kids may experience

- I had another girls talk, although it ended up being mixed gender at the last second. I was preparing for a gender segregated session, but right before the session we realized we were missing a projector so I had to quickly readjust. I spent the first 20 minutes with just the girls so we could finish the section on periods. I brought in a pad and a tampon to pass around, and everyone was SUPER curious, especially the younger girls. They had TONS of questions, so it was excellent to see that they were engaged and wanting to learn. Then, the boys joined us, and we talked about healthy versus unhealthy relationships, the concept of deal breakers, abuse, and relationships/dating in general. I was pleasantly surprised with how well everyone listened and the activities I planned went over smoothly. Next session: contraceptives, consent, and sex! It's daunting not because of the content, but because of how important it is to talk about it all in a healthy way. The good news is, I think I'm establishing myself as someone that they can come to with ANY questions.

A girl's talk session in action

- On Friday we had a fun fair and it was SOOOOOO AWESOME! There were six teams and six stations, tons of prizes, a HUGE relay race, and then a wonderful meal for the kids. The meal was really really special. The staff served the kids at actual tables, and they got to use a fork and a knife, and real plates and cups instead of their usual plastic dishes. The kids were simply BEAMING by the end of the day! It was exhausting, but a TOTAL blast! And we even got off earlier than usual!

Luckymore is one of SSI's success stories. He was a leadership
participant and Stepping Stones really fostered his musical
talent so that he went on to win My African Dream, a televised
talent competition in Africa. He is teaching the kids a new song
he is working on. I'll post it when it's finished!

One of the fun fair stations- eating apples on string without touching
them, and then quickly categorizing items.

Another station: one person mimes actions, the person seated
relays the actions to the third

This was my super-cool station. Each team member had a
string tied to an elastic. The group had to work together to
assemble and build a tower using only the elastic.

Enthusiastically running the show

The final piece!

A huge cheer off to determine who got to have tea break first

African skies are gorgeous!

The final relay!

Passing the ball using their feet

Go go go!!!

The winners!!!

Luckymore showcasing the new song

What a special meal! Seated at tables, with cutlery and real dishes!

- A lovely WUSC volunteer from Ottawa came to SSI, and we ran a yoga class with the kids! What a dream come true! And they were surprisingly receptive to all of it. I really hope I can do more yoga with them, it has been such an important thing for me here and I'm sure it could help them with their trouble focusing.

Running a yoga session with the kiddies!

Yogi masters!

A Botswana yogini in the making!

- Another SUPER exciting thing this week was getting training to do literacy assessments!!!!! This sounds drab, but for me it's literally a dream come true. When I initially started doing the special education reading, I was SO overwhelmed by it all and didn't even know where to start. Now, with these relatively quick assessments, I'm able to know EXACTLY what reading level my kids are at, and exactly what areas we need to focus on. The assessments are pretty straightforward. We get the kids to read passages that get increasingly more difficult. As they read, we time them and mark for the types of errors they make, and based on a criteria list we place them at specific reading levels. I knew my readers had difficulties, but it was still a little shocking to see that kids in grade 9 are reading at a grade 2 level. I find this the OPPOSITE of discouraging though- it's motivating! Everyone starts somewhere, and now that I have way more structure with everything, our reading sessions will be as effective as possible. Wooooo!!! I'll have these kids reading in no time!

Cutting these took ten million hours, but I have SO MANY new flashcards and activities!

Aaaaaand, as for my random life outside of SSI:

- Guys. My quality of life has gone up DUHHHH RASTICALLY!!!!!!!! Kate and I managed to fix the tub, and we now have a handheld SHOWER HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like, WOW my life is so much better! The pressure is low, and it doesn’t compare to Canadian showers, but oh my GOD I was so happy after I washed my hair with it. I was literally grinning for a good hour. What an improvement!!! Hygiene has been such a challenge, so this is really really exciting. To be able to easily rinse my body?! Say hello to a much less greasy Shila!

- There are these two goats we see wandering around almost everyday on the way to and from work. This week, we saw one of the goats PLAYING with a dog!!! They were pals!!! It was SO cute. The dog was super adorable, pawing the goat and jumping all over the place. The goat was jumping and being really precious. Who knew goats and dogs could be BFFs?

- Botswana can openers: SO scary. Basically a knife. I did open my veggie curry though, and lived to tell the tale

- Our Saturday was SOOO random! We were invited by a co-worker to her two year old's birthday party in her local village of Mmangkodi. After some scheduling difficulties and a VERY sketchy combi ride, we met another SSI staff in the capital and got on the bus to Mmangkodi. We drove an hour and half, and it was SO neat to see RURAL rural Botswana. We got off the bus in a tiny, tiny town, and started walking, and I'm not being dramatic at all when I say that we were in the middle of NOWHERE. We walked through a field, over a little hill, there was NOTHING around us. Our co worker was like Hmmm…. I hope I know where it is…… I was a liiiiiiiittle concerned. But then! We hit some small houses, and heard some music, and all of a sudden we saw the party, and it was FULL ON! Like, in the middle of NOWHERE was this HUGE bash! There was a blow up jumping castle for kids, tents, and even a DJ! It was packed, there were lots of familiar faces from work, and it was a lovely lovely thing all around. We tried traditional beer- YUCK! It was a sickly grey colour, smelled bad, and tasted even worse. Apparently only "traditionals" like traditional beer. It was gross. The dancing scene was the best part for sure! Who knew, even in the bush there can be some epic birthday parties!

On our way to the birthday party. It seemed like we were
walking aimlessly into the bush.

Finally! Houses!

The precious birthday girl! She was TERRIFIED of white people. Absolutely terrified!

These two kids were seriously dance stars. SO awesome! Work it!

A jumping castle!!!

A Stepping Stones dance partayyyy

Everyone is good at dancing- except us hahaha

Probably not the best picture in the world, BUT, the
Stepping Stones crew!

- On a hitch back to Mochudi I was listening to the radio, and laughed to myself when the weather report was simply "Tomorrow will be cloudy and cold"

- We got a hand blender and I can make smoothies!!!!!!!! SO EXCITING! Now, to find some stuff to put in them. My first smoothie was pretty drab. If only berries were accessible here! Smoothies are the best though, I'm so happy I can blend stuff!