Wednesday, December
19
This morning, I wake up early before my alarm, at 6 am. I am
excited for what the day will offer. Xander has been up for a while already,
sipping his instant coffee, waiting for Wayne to get up and administer the
medicines. Twice a day, all the kids who have HIV line up to take their
anti-retroviral cocktails of between 2 and 4 pills at once. The medicine has
been supplied to Wat Opot by the Global Fund, and distributed by Doctors
Without Borders since about 2004. The medicine is now being distributed by the
Cambodian government.
I wander over to the kids who are getting ready to go to
school, in their uniforms and fed. They rise at 6 am each day, and school starts
at 7. I join Jenny and Ben (2 of the volunteers) in walking the kids to school,
which is just down the road, behind Wat Opot. Srey Maov holds my hand as we
walk. Since a child already holds my left hand and I have my water bottle in my
right, she takes my bottle into her other hand to free mine up for her to hold.
I find this very touching. Her smile is just as luminous as 3 years ago and I
wonder if she remembers me.
Back at breakfast, we eat a meal of omelette, ramen and rice
and it tastes delicious. Melinda has made strong, black coffee, for which I am
grateful. After breakfast, I go get the instruments from my room and take them
to the playroom, where Melinda suggests we keep them. There is one key for the
outer playroom and another one for the inside playroom and you need one to get
to the other. I have the key for the inner playroom only, and I need someone to
open the outer door for me each time. I decide to stay put in there for the
whole morning, so I don’t have to lock it again.
Kids begin trickling in. The
kids whose teachers don’t show up wander back home and seize the opportunity in
the playroom. At first, I get about an hour with 2 high school-aged kids. Ya,
age 16, has a split lip with stitches because another boy slashed it with a
razor blade he was using for an art project in art class. He claimed it was
accidental, during a pretend fight. One of their favourite pastimes is watching
boxing on tv when no one is watching them. The culprit was sent away for a few
days to show that you never use weapons at Wat Opot. Apparently he has a
distant Aunt in the village. He called Wayne asking if he could come home and when
he returned, he apologized to Ya and the entire community during evening
meditation.
I enjoy teaching Ya and Tao Nang as they pick up chords very
quickly. The volunteers join in and soon we are all playing Bob Marley’s ‘One
Love’, and ‘Ode to Joy’ together. More of the smaller children come in just
before lunch and I am quickly overwhelmed by them reaching to grab the ukuleles
and chanting their refrain “me? me?” right into my face, while I try to teach
another. I go get more instruments out, but quickly realize that the playroom
is not a conducive environment for effective group teaching. They have some fun
playing around and I try to encourage peer teaching, but mostly they are
interested in exploring the instruments in their own way. Miraculously, nothing
has broken or gone missing when I do a check before lunch, and I ascertain that
they have passed the durability test. Ukuleles and recorders were a good
choice.
Exhausted by lunchtime, I eat, then take a shower for relief
from the intense midday heat. The shower is a large basin of cold water, with a
bucket you dip into the water and douse yourself with. The sudden, heavy stream
of cold water on my head is a shock to my system, but I feel instant relief.
I head back to the playroom and find a bunch of kids
watching a movie. They are also hiding from the heat. I gather some plastic
cups to try and teach the cup game to anyone who’s interested. It’s a difficult
game, challenging the coordination of even my 6th graders back home.
A few of the young kids are the only ones interested in leaving the movie, so I
give it a shot. They are surprisingly coordinated and follow me intently. This
game would go over really well here and I wish I’d brought some cups with me as
I can only find 4 in the kitchen.
I take a new approach and bring a bunch of recorders out to
the gazebo. It’s now about 1pm and school starts again at around 2 or 2:30, so
there are many children grades 3-6 hanging around. About 10 kids are interested
in learning recorder and I line them up in the gazebo. I haven’t tried any
organized lessons up till now and I take a stab at classroom management. With
Xander’s help, I make them put their instruments away if they cannot listen and
take turns. We figure this will reinforce that it is a privilege to be using
these instruments.
This works great for a while. We lose a couple of kids who
can’t be bothered with paying attention and the remaining 8 are focused and
want to learn. It’s going well, until a group of smaller children, ages 6 or 7,
come and want to join. I tell them they will have to learn another time since
we’ve already started. So, they just sit and watch, but eventually become too
distracting and, since we’re outdoors, distractions are unmanageable. The
session ends as I let them practice what they’ve learned and I work one on one
with some of the talented kids on jingle bells. They go back to school, and I
hope I haven’t made them late for class.
At dinnertime I ask Melinda if there is a classroom I can
use tomorrow, for more organized lessons. As luck would have it, it turns out
that on Thursdays, there are no elementary school classes and I can use the
classroom all day tomorrow. It even has a door I can close! Melinda says I can
schedule “music school” for the day, hourly and by grade level. This is
fantastic news. I schedule the day and announce it at evening meditation. The
kids are all excited and take note of their music class time slot.
Grades 1 and 2 recorder
|
8-9 am
|
Grades 3 and 4 recorder
|
9-10 am
|
Grades 5 and 6 ukulele
|
10-11am
|
LUNCH BREAK
|
11-1pm
|
Grades 1,2,3
|
1-2pm
|
Grades 4,5,6
|
2-3pm
|
All together
|
3-4pm
|
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