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Working at the Home:
The whole experience was both uplifting and heartbreaking. I had to keep telling myself that despite the sometimes dubious care from some of the staff (although there were also cultural differences that came into play)that the children were receiving, it was better than some of their previous experiences.
The home itself dominated a hilltop and entire road, there were 4 main buildings, although one had been almost entirely destroyed in a fire last year so renovation was going on. Sadly one of the little girls had been killed in the fire.
There is an office block, an old people's section, the 'new block' where the girls and some of the younger children sleep and live. Next to the burnt out site there is a ramshackle building where the older boys are currently sleeping, the baby and todller room is also situated here. There is a covered area consisting of corrugated metal and just lines of beds - the sides are pretty much open to the elements. Thsi is where some of the men sleep.
There is a dogs kennel area - although they are really kept in cages and sometimes taken out by the boys, they are fed and watered but clearly not exercised enough. But, this does give the boys a focus and they seem to love the dogs and their numerous puppies!
The children are at school during the day, some start very early in the morning and are home by lunchtime, some go in for afternoons and some seem to do a more UK type of day. There are a handful of children who don't attend school - this is mainly due to their status as imigrants and the fact they do not have the correct paperwork. It is these children that are targeted most for English and Maths lessons with any volunteers. The lessons usually took place in the afternoon and you never quite knew how many would attend, what level they would be at or how long you would have them for! Made for some interewsting times!
The children, particularly the boys are expected to help out a lot, even helping with some of the building work, it was terrifying watching them wandering around about 40ft up along very narrow walkways - no scaffodling or safety gear - i just stopped looking after a while! Although it was frustrsating when i had to battle with the builders to let the boys go so they could come for lessons - education, especially for the Indian boys is not considered a priority!!!
The games we introduced were very popular, the children used to complain that school was very boring and the teachers gave out a lot of copying and learning by rote seemed the norm. I introduced them to hangman and they all loved it - part of the reason was they got to come up and write on the board and take over for a while - something they would never usually get to do.
Pictionary and Junior Scrabble also proved popular and highly amusing sometimes! We also bought Twister for the younger children - great fun!
The baby and toddler room was hard work, mainly due to the lack of structured activities for the children, the older children were sometimes expected to stay in an empty room for hours with nothing but each other to fight with - they were bored and had behavour issues galore!
Managed to introduce a 'play time' where we bought along toys and tried to teach the children how to play and share - they had never been alllowed to learn how to do these basic social skills. Also did some singing and rhyme time with them - really enjoyed doing this as they were all very enthusiastic and learnt the new songs within a couple of days! The few babies that were there mainly stayed in their cots or were sat in walkers, they were fed and changed regularly but again had little or no stimulation, i fell in love with a 5 month baby girl, no one knew her name so i named her and it seems to have stuck - so she is now called Poppy Christine. It suits her.
There were sometimes functions that the children were invited to, two that happened recently were a trip to the cinema to see a particularly awful Malay film about a dance troupe - was truly bad!!! We also went to see Disney on ice which was actualy pretty good fun! You just never knew what each day would bring, from accompanying a child to the dentist with a broken tooth to taking a few of them out to a night market - varied and interesting! Also spent 3 hours in a haridressers watching one of the girls have her hair straightened - this is a big deal and fascinating to watch, the hairdressers was intersting because it seemed to be a meeting point for locals, including men and children - got so busy in there at one point and it was mainly locals just hanging out rather than paying customers!
Anyway - had a brilliant time and cried buckets when i had to leave - just need to keep selling stuff on Ebay and I can go back!!! :o)
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