“I’m making a mosquito. Ndi kola ensidi.”
“Ensidi! Eh, eh!” (giggles). “Ogya kusomesa n’ensidi?”
“Yes.” (As in yes, I’m going to teach with the mosquito).
I took my scissors away from baby Shamila and tried to distract her with pieces of cardboard. I couldn’t work inside because, in my very limited kitchen/sitting room space my neighbor was checking her facebook. I moved my paper-mache operation outside, just one problem-- unending curiosity from neighbor children. I saw this as an annoyance at first, I even tried to bribe them to go find something else to do with stickers, but with the language barrier they didn’t understand the concept and just took the stickers and continue to stare.
“Mugye, muzaana.” (Go you guys, go play something).
“Ah, tuli kubonaku.” (Naw, we’re watching you).
Shakira flipped through my biology book and started asking what the names of everything in Lusoga was, including things like amoebas and diagrams of mitosis. Meddy was already whining about something, and appealing to me like I knew what he was saying. A bit frazzled but not wanting to chase them all away, I figured they could at least rip paper. I showed them how to do one sheet, and they all happily helped tear up paper strips. “What are we doing?” I would ask, and they would answer, in English, “we are tearing paper!”
Once I had the frame of the mosquito together, I figured well, kids like to get dirty, why not let them join me with the messy part. I brought my pot of glue out and started working, asking the kids to first wait. They watched me do a couple of strips of paper, then demanded to try it themselves. Surprisingly there weren’t any fights or major glue-tastrophies. Most of the sticky flour-water concoction managed to stay on the paper, in the pot or on the work of art with only a small portion getting on legs and faces.
Immaculate had recently told me about something on TV that had really impressed her--there were children (she said with much amazement) in South Korea doing the paper-mache project like I did for the college students, specifically the model volcano. Oh? Yes, she was saying, children like ten years old. They were doing it in school. Ah. Can you remember doing paper mache in fourth grade, in school for a project? I sure can. I thought about that, as I was sitting out with the neighbor kids making a model mosquito, that kids don’t get to experience this art process in school here, because ‘school’ here means sitting on an uncomfortable chair, or on the dirt floor, and listening to a teacher talk for eight hours with no chance for hands-on experience or any other genuine learning activity. I took a breath and reminded myself not to be a grouch and always allow the kids in on a learning activity.
“Mary, see the monkey!” Hadijah pointed to the right of my house. What?! Sure enough, a man was running by with a small monkey close behind. The monkey had a rope tied to him but the man wasn’t holding on to the rope, the monkey just followed. Apparently Wanyange knows him as the guy with the monkey. I was later washing out the paper-mache mess in my back yard and he ran by again, with his little monkey following. I shouldn’t encourage the domestication of monkeys, but gosh darnit the little thing was so cute! So strange. All I could think was that I missed taking a picture. To fix that, I had Hadijah (the only one not participating in the sticky project) to run in and get my camera. This was the first time I let the kids play with my camera, and I was a bit nervous. To my surprise, Hadijah took some pretty neat pictures!
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| Hadijah, appointed photographer, figuring out the camera. |
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| Our mosquito body |
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| Probably the most attractive photo of me. |
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| Meddy and Lazia, taking a break to pose |
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| Me, Lazia, Shakira and Sandra, pasting |
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| This made me happy, Meddy kept pointing to this picture and saying "dinosaur!" :) It's pretty interesting the lack of knowledge about dinosaurs in Uganda. |
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| This was actually taken while my sister was visiting--the luggage we bought for her was cheaply made, so I solved the problem by doing the Ugandan thing and just carried it on my head. |
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