The first volunteers in Okakarara are back
Hello, I am Johanna, one of the volunteers in Okakarara. I arrived together with Julius on 08 January 2022, so the following Monday was then our first working day.
What I immediately liked was, that here a „Hello“ always goes with a „How are you?“. This makes the first meeting in the morning much more pleasant and often a lovely conversation naturally develops from it.
On a normal day we grab one of the kindergarten or preschool groups after the greeting round and start our sporting activities. These include obstacle courses, balancing, imitating animals or somersaults on the crash mat. After the children have eaten their breakfast, we usually give a few ideas for free play, paint and do crafts with the children or prepare the afternoon straight away.
At 2 pm the schoolchildren come to the project for afternoon care. First, they do their homework together, then they work on English vocabulary or mental arithmetic in a playful way and, if there is still time afterwards, one or two games are played. The finish is always Cookie Time, where the pupils can bag biscuits by quickly solving multiplication table tasks.
One challenge, that we encounter every day, is the language barrier with the younger children. Only a few of them speak English at home, which is why communication works almost exclusively through the teachers or with gestures. But that works quite well and with the help of our colleagues’ translations even more complicated games can be explained quickly.
What surprised me positively, is how open even the older schoolchildren are towards our ideas for activities. They are motivated and enthusiastic about almost everything, and so in the short time we have already been able to build a good rapport with some of them. That is very enjoyable and motivates us to put even more effort into the preparation.
Dear Johanna, we are delighted that you have found your way to the steps project in Okakarara – among the first since the pandemic situation. Thank you very much for the insight into your daily routine – we wish you an experience-rich time in Namibia!
