Over the past few months, I worked with our local secondary school to do a fun, arts project. Having wanted to start an art club at the school for the past year, I've been too busy to really commit to the project. Also, it doesn't exactly fit into the health framework that I'm supposed to be basing my projects on. Despite this, I worked together with the head teacher and artistically-inclined students to do a 4m x 2m World Map mural!
We started in December although here in Malawi, that's not ideal timing. Afternoon rains forced us to stop multiple times, but we rescheduled and continued working.
First, we used small rulers and triangles to make a grid of 6cm x 6cm squares--28 rows x 56 rows of them, so 1,568 squares in total. This took much longer than expected to get them straight and perfect. Then the rain came.
The next session, we worked on drawing each continent and country using this grid. The group, which comprised of almost all boys except for one girl who joined later, were complete perfectionists and spent a lot of time on this phase. I was assuming that I'd be helping a lot with the drawing, but honestly, I was surprised and impressed by their talent. I acted as a supervisor mostly, checking over their shoulders, and making sure that they were drawing in the right boxes.
Finally, we got to the painting part! The group was very excited to learn about mixing colors and to use paint considering most of them had never used it before. I was shocked to learn that they didn't know anything about mixing primary colors to make secondary colors. So, I did the mixing as they looked on with intense curiosity, and then they did all the painting! It took us two sessions to get the majority of countries colored in (imagine Europe and how small all of those countries are)! We even had a guest appearance by my wonderful friend since 4th grade, Anna, who was visiting for Christmas and helped to really encourage the group as well as to get some tricky spots done. That day we also got rained out in the afternoon with a big storm. I was leaving the village for a month, so we had to take an extended break.
When I returned to the village at the end of January, I thought we would be able to finish in one session. Well, it took us three more days, but we finally finished our World Map last week! Perfecting country lines, painting tiny islands, and writing/labeling all of the country names took much longer than I'd expected! By the time we got to all the country names, I was so tired of looking at the map! But I learned a lot from painting this massive 4 m x 2 m mural, so I'm hoping the students did too! So many people came by and noticed just how small Malawi is in comparison to the rest of the world. It's amazing how few people here know where Africa is on the map or what a world map even looks like. Since finishing the map, I've noticed that during their break times, there are always a few students standing around it and studying it, which is super encouraging to see. The teachers and chiefs have been very complimentary and keep talking about how the map is a legacy and also how I'll always be remembered by it. I keep trying to tell them that all I did was supervise it and that the students really did all the work! At least the students know that and I hope they will take ownership of their work. Their names will forever be painted in the corner under "artists," so they'll always be remembered by our community.
We started in December although here in Malawi, that's not ideal timing. Afternoon rains forced us to stop multiple times, but we rescheduled and continued working.
First, we used small rulers and triangles to make a grid of 6cm x 6cm squares--28 rows x 56 rows of them, so 1,568 squares in total. This took much longer than expected to get them straight and perfect. Then the rain came.
The next session, we worked on drawing each continent and country using this grid. The group, which comprised of almost all boys except for one girl who joined later, were complete perfectionists and spent a lot of time on this phase. I was assuming that I'd be helping a lot with the drawing, but honestly, I was surprised and impressed by their talent. I acted as a supervisor mostly, checking over their shoulders, and making sure that they were drawing in the right boxes.
When I returned to the village at the end of January, I thought we would be able to finish in one session. Well, it took us three more days, but we finally finished our World Map last week! Perfecting country lines, painting tiny islands, and writing/labeling all of the country names took much longer than I'd expected! By the time we got to all the country names, I was so tired of looking at the map! But I learned a lot from painting this massive 4 m x 2 m mural, so I'm hoping the students did too! So many people came by and noticed just how small Malawi is in comparison to the rest of the world. It's amazing how few people here know where Africa is on the map or what a world map even looks like. Since finishing the map, I've noticed that during their break times, there are always a few students standing around it and studying it, which is super encouraging to see. The teachers and chiefs have been very complimentary and keep talking about how the map is a legacy and also how I'll always be remembered by it. I keep trying to tell them that all I did was supervise it and that the students really did all the work! At least the students know that and I hope they will take ownership of their work. Their names will forever be painted in the corner under "artists," so they'll always be remembered by our community.
