29.6.2010

We were happy to have the meeting as planned. Mama Elizabeth (she wishes us to call her Bibi, grandma in Swahili) helped us to create groups consisting of Form II and III students. The sixty girls were divided into groups of 10 or 14 students. This means that from Monday to Friday we´ll see one group each day, so in a month we´ll see each group four times.

Ahead of our planned schedule, in the afternoon we had our first workshop, which we have named ‘Art Club’. The curious Form III girls were giggling and peeking into the classroom fifteen minutes before the scheduled start. This giggling went silent once we sat down in a circle in order to introduce ourselves. During the round all the girls obediently said that they either "love" or "like" art. We told the girls about our plans for the coming weeks. We tried to stress that the purpose of the Art Club is not to produce fancy art work. Instead, we encouraged the girls to play with the provided materials and find out something new about themselves. The girls appeared shy and eager at the same time.

The art making was started with a warm-up exercise where five girls worked together on a huge sheet of brown paper having crayons as their medium. After a stiff start, the girls loosened up and started having fun. Although the idea of making a group drawing was unfamiliar for the participants they worked comfortably with each other. It was interesting to see how some girls drew only on the area at their arm´s reach while others were excited to leave marks on the entire sheet. The intense drawing followed its own course until the papers were fully covered. The girls seemed surprised and proud at their creation. There was even some hand clapping.

The second drawing was made individually. We suggested the girls to introduce themselves with a drawing, that is, to share something about themselves by making a picture. This idea was grasped quickly and soon the girls were enthusiastically at work. However, looking at the picture and sharing about the experience of creating them at the end of the session seemed more difficult. This is more than understandable since this was our first encounter and making self-explorative art is new for the girls. We look forward to see how the other four groups will respond. We´ll update you later on that. Now we go for a very much needed afternoon walk before the sun sets. It's been a long and wonderful day.