Monday
We went to see Bwafwano school in Chawama again. We planned to select the students today but we made some changes to our plans. We didn’t want to exclude anyone because this was a very special school to us. Instead, we divided everyone into 8 groups. We gave them paper and a pencil to write down what they would like to have inside of their house. We thought this would be a good idea to see what they would like to have in their dreamhouse. We noticed that most students wrote something like “TV, Sofa, DVD, Cooker, Fan”. Some students added “Car” and another one added “cup” to drink from.
We decided to tell the students to look for materials when going home. Materials like seeds, stones and anything they can build a dreamhouse as a Group. When saying goodbye, Justine and
Theresa left in a hurry. When Jorrit and I were about to walk out, everybody jumped up and started running towards us. We got jumped with hugs and a lot of students wanted to show their love. We made it out alive…
Wednesday
On Wednesday we went back to Bwafwano school again. The students brought a lot of materials like seeds, branches and more. There were a lot and it seems like they really tried hard to get them. We started interviewing students one by one about their life. How does their house looks like, a short timetable about daily activities, parents, brothers, what they have in their house, if they have electricity and what they would like to have in their house. We took portrait pictures of every student. Since there were a lot of students we weren’t able to interview all of them on this day. So we are continuing the interviews on Friday.
Thursday
We agreed to come back to Garden community school on Thursday. We basically did the same thing on Wednesday but this time we wrote questions on the school board. The students here already knew how to write so it would be much more faster this way. We handed out papers and pencils where needed. We only had a small amount of time already because of the exams they were having so interviewing them one by one would not have worked out well. After they wrote their story on the paper, we took a picture of each and one of them.
Friday
As agreed with Bwafwano, we came back to continue doing the interviews. There are a lot of students in this school so we couldn’t finish this on Wednesday. We interviewed roughly 15 students. Most of the students don’t speak and understand English that well so we had to translate our questions from English to Nyanja, and translate their response in Nyanja back to English. Something interesting is that most students here dream of having a bed of their own or a dvd player and a color television. Many of them also would also like electricity in their houses.