Day at the Prestige pre- school and nursery

Day starts like it always starts: a cup of instant coffee and few toasts with jam. After breakfast I and Camilla, another intern here at AIT, are waiting our ride at the volunteer house. Camilla tells me that it would take between 25 minutes and 1,5 hours to get to the school depending how many kids we are picking up after us. Car comes to pick us up at 8.00. There are already few kids and one teacher in the car, but we have to pick couple more kids before we can go to school.

The school is only going on for two weeks, so it is not a regular school, more like fun summer school thing for kids whose parents are still working. Prestige school is located in Mbezi area in Northern Dar es Salaam. School has tuition, so kids who go to school here are coming from “privileged” backgrounds. Kids are mostly between four and six years old.

We arrive at school around 9 o’clock. Some of the children are so young that they go to nursery. Unfortunately I did not have the time to visit the nursery side. Every morning starts with a praying moment. I also introduce myself and kids are asking me different kinds of questions like “Where are you from?”, “How old are you?”.
After that kids move over to the main teaching area. There are quite many adults: four in a class and then there is me and Camilla, which is a lot comparing to Finland where the same size class would have only two adults. First “subject” is learning what nose does, then color and paint different areas from paper they have been given. Camilla tells me that they have gone through all of the different areas before.

 After that it is breakfast time (I feel like a hobbit because I’m having second breakfast), me and Camilla are having chapati and tee. Tee is so sweet that I can almost feel the sugar rush in my veins, chapati are good, like they always are, the only thing missing is some hot sauce.

Painting continues after breakfast and the subject is tongue. When this is done, we go outside to play. Camilla takes eight kids with her to play football and the rest of us are throwing a ball to one another. Kids and teachers also play a local game that I don’t know.
After playing outside for roughly 35 minutes we head back inside. There is a rehearsal of some kind of play. Camilla tells me that they have practiced it every day. The day ends with lunch. I and Camilla are having ugali and some veggies. I think there is cabbage and carrots with some sort of red sauce. Anyway the food is good. And soon it is time to head back to the volunteer house in Madale. This time the travel takes only 20 minutes.

By: Tia Suomi