Our first drive into Nayamba school, in the back of a caged truck, felt like arriving somewhere very familiar. We could hear the children singing on our approach to the school. The new building, the classroom block, is almost complete. There are 5 new classrooms which more then doubles the total size of the school. After a quick introduction to the teachers, the children came out to welcome us. They sang and read about how happy they were at Nayamba school and what a blessing it was.
After this, we told stories to the children, acting them out. At the end of week, the aim was for the children to tell us stories.
We then started our introductions to the classes we would be working with. Our first day was the very first day of preschool which Michaela was setting up. She was expecting 16 children but ended up with 60 so had to quickly adapt her plans! Michaela set up her preschool within 30 minutes with all the different areas of learning.
In total we had 400kg of luggage, all resources for the school. It was a slight challenge manoeuvring this amount of luggage around the airports but came with plenty of laughs!
We were welcomed by the teachers with a feast for lunch which was chicken, no African Celebration takes place without chicken, Sheema, cabbage and fish. We tucked eating with our hands taking the lead from the teachers and learning their technique for rolling the sheema in your hand and dipping it into the sauce.
At lunchtime the older children go home every day and the younger children come to school. We met our new classes and started working with them. Our first mission was to introduce the story they were going to learn.
At the end of the school day, we helped to sort out and unpack all the resources from our suitcases and then walked through the farm back to where we were staying.
Some children walk for as long as 2 hours to come to school everyday.
The first day was exhausting but felt so incredibly welcoming from both the teachers and the children.