Day Six- Un Jour Inoubliable

We devoted our fifth day fully to the children of Senegal. We began with another visit to "Les Cajoutiers", and organized various hands-on activities for the children there, which were thoughtfully prepared beforehand. Going from class to class, we made sure to interact with all the students of the school and left no child unattended.

We divided ourselves into four groups, where one group worked with the deaf children, another group with the upper elementary students, the third with the lower elementary students, and the fourth with the kindergarten students. With the deaf children, Laura, Jenny, and Alba prepared loom bands to make colorful bracelets. They were surprised to find that the children were not only familiar with making the bracelets, but were actually much more skillful than our students. Nevertheless, it was a time spent well, and both groups of students learned from one another.

The second group of students, which consisted of Lili, Joe, and Dani, had a busy time decorating the bare walls of the kindergarten area, putting up a world peace poster made by the NHS on the upper elementary levels, and finally, providing the children with geometric coloring templates. The children were exuberant to see all these colorful supplements brought to them, and the group with the coloring cards was extremely proud of their final creations, eager to have a picture taken with them.

The third group, Sisi and Ms.Dermish, spent their time with the lower elementary students, gluing beads on drawing papers and folding origami. The first class, which played with the beads, went outside one group at a time to complete their activity. The students were polite and shared the supplies equally amongst themselves. At the end, they created a large collaborative piece of artwork depicting a tree, flowers, and butterflies. In the second class, Sisi, Jenny, Alba, and Madame Fabiny spontaneously came up with a boat folding activity, which turned out to be both a challenge but also a satisfaction once the boats were created.

The final group, Mariana and Ruby, worked with the kindergarten students to make pipe cleaner figures and later played a memory game, which was very engaging. It was a special interaction, since the children did not speak any French, and thus there was little verbal interaction between the students and us; it was purely based on body language and smiles.

Additionally, we also met our sponsored children again and gave them useful little presents, such as a notebook and colored pencils. They were happy to see us again and enjoyed their gifts with warm smiles.

In the afternoon, we went by horse cart to the nearby village of Gandiol, where they watched a wonderful dance performance by the locals. Despite having meager infrastructure (including no electricity) there, the villagers were cheerful and welcomed us very warmly.