This week many of us were able to attend the local spelling bee and an exhibition of Creative Arts on Friday. The spelling bee involved roughly 54 participants from grades 4 to 6 where they were required to spell only English words, which they were given in advance. The exhibition involved 11 local schools where three students from each grade competed in events such as creative writing, reading, poetry, colouring, and mental math. Students competed against other children in their grade level from various schools in order to determine a winner.
Our placement is at Tshakuma Junior/Primary School where the grades are from R, which stands for Reception (kindergarten) to 4 and there are 6 classrooms. Our school is one of the smallest with 208 students and 6 teachers; one for each classroom. The school day is from 7:30-1:30 with 11 periods and 2 breaks. Our host mom is the vice principal at Tshakuma or they refer to her as H.O.D, which stands for head of department and she also teaches grade 1. The principal at the school also teaches R. It is very common amongst the local schools for the vice principal and principal to teach. We were able to observe some of the female students performing a group dance during school where majority of them danced in a line and then 3 of them were in the center playing drums. The song they sang was call and response, which is a common type of song that we have observed thus far.
In our home we stay with our host parents, who we call mom and papa, as well as our mom’s mother and their adopted son who is in high school. Papa is a retired teacher who is very much into animals and the history of the Venda community. He enjoys educating us daily about these topics and takes interest into learning about our culture; as a group we have called this type of learning parallel learning, because we are learning from each other.
Last night as a team, we created a dance to the song There Was A Great Moose to teach some of the children in the community on Monday during our welcome ceremony. After our weekly meeting with the team, we were able to learn some of the common dances, one being head/shoulders in TshiVenda. On Monday we are introducing our Matavha painting project, where we will be painting a mural and 16 classrooms. We will also be repainting all of the chalkboards in the classroom with the help of Dr. Emberly’s sister, Team Limpopo, and some local volunteers. On Monday we are also having a braai (which means bbq) – YUM! It is a welcoming get together for our team, our host families, teachers, students (over 500!) and principals from our placement schools. Some of the special guests attending our braai are the station commander, chair person of education in the area for the Limpopo Department of Education, representative of the chief, and many more! At the braai we will be performing our Great Big Moose song/dance, which will be absolutely AMAZING!!
Today Team Limpopo is heading out to our first exciting day excursion! We are going to see some of the Venda sacred sites, which include Lake Fundudzi, Dzata Ruins, Thathe Vondo Forest, and Tshatshingo Potholes (Google them!!!).
With lots of love from Team Limpopo ft. Andrea, Vanessa, and Mo J
Team Limpopo 