Kilima Hewa Preschool - First Impressions

For the next couple of weeks we (Tona, Forrest, Jacob and Halle) will be helping to teach at a preschool in a village about 5 km from Moshi called Kilima Hewa. The proprietor, “Mr. M,” runs the school attached to his house, in the middle of a big field of maize and sunflowers. It’s two cement rooms with window openings that have iron bars but no screens (no electricity), that open onto a packed-down red dirt playing area. It has two see-saws (one is missing a seat), and three swing supports but no swings. And that’s it.



Inside the rooms, they are furnished with wooden desk-benches that seat 2-3 small children, and have the alphabet and the numbers painted as a frieze around the inside. There is a big rectangle painted black on the front of the classroom for a chalkboard. There are enough pencils and crayons for the children to use, but paper is rather scarce and the chalkboard is hard on Mr. M’s supply of chalk.

He was happy to have us come and help because he is the only teacher at the school and runs it all himself. He has 65 enrolled but they don’t all come every day, so there are usually between 50-60 there; today (since it was the start of school after a month-long holiday) there were only about 40 children. Their parents pay 2000 Tanzanian shillings a month, which is about $1.50. They are ages 3-6 and they walk to the school themselves, with little backpacks or just little plastic bags that hold their notebooks (if they have them) and something that clinks – we figured out it was bottlecaps which they use for counting and math.

We are not really “teaching,” because we don’t know enough Swahili to be that helpful, and the children only know a few words of English. So they will ask me a long, earnest question and I can’t answer what must be a very simple request. Today for example at the end of class I was drawing animals for them, and they would order, “Draw a [animal name]” but I don’t know all the animal names. I must seem like a very stupid grownup to them but they are very patient.

They call all four of us “Teacher” even though we are more like teacher’s aides. We help on the playground, turning jump ropes and pushing the kids on the see-saws. We sit in on the lessons and try to learn the songs and taught a couple of our own, and help “correct” what they copy off the board by going around with red pens making check marks and smiley faces next to their work. We help serve the “porridge,” which is a giant plastic bucket full of white-maize meal porridge plus sugar – it looks exactly like Cream of Wheat except it’s made from ground corn. For some of the kids, Mr. M tells us this will be their first meal of the day. They get a full plastic mug of it and a spoon to eat it with, and seconds or thirds if there’s enough to go around. One small boy doesn’t eat it, and Mr. M explained he is Maasai and only eats meat.

The schedule goes like this:

8 am children arrive and play on the playground until the bell rings (a big metal bell rung with a stick outside the door)

8:20 or so – 9:30 a structured lesson time – Monday it was the 5 vowels and some short words that are made of two vowels together (we don’t have many of these in English, but in Swahili there are at least several); Tuesday it was counting from 1-50 in English and Swahili. Most of the lesson is recited together in loud unison. The children then copy the lesson off the board into their notebooks or onto pieces of paper, and we go around and check their work, help them with the tough letters and numbers (5 is hard to learn to write, isn’t it?) and give praise or assistance.



At 9:30 they go outside for half an hour of playtime. The jump ropes we brought have been very much appreciated and loved already. I couldn’t figure out what American preschool children would do with jump ropes, whether single or double, but they are great jumpers and great jump-rope turners (“camba” is jump rope, “ruka” with a rolled-R is to jump, and “funga” is knotted/tangled, I learned those words very quickly) and have made wonderful use of them. We also brought a couple of inflatable beach balls since they were not bulky to pack, but of course they didn’t fare well on a stony-hard-dirt playground setting, alas. A soccer ball would have been more welcome, since they use some rolled-up socks. Also during playtime some of the girls like to braid (“sokia”) my and Halle’s hair (nwele). They are fascinated with our hair and make very fast, very tiny braids. A few of the better artists drew portraits of me with hair sticking out all over. Which is exactly what my hair does. Also on the first day they poked Jacob’s legs and wanted to see the palms of our hands. Like all children, they can be rough on each other and so I have spent part of each recess time cuddling and comforting someone crying.



10:00 – 10:30 After playtime there is porridge, as described above, and when they are done, they put their cups and spoons into a big plastic basin and have a little more time outside. Then Mr. M cleans the dishes.



11:00 Mr. M calls them back into the classroom for another desk lesson, but this one is more “funny,” as he put it, meaning it’s more about drawing or songs or stories. So far he has drawn a large picture on the board, describing all the things in it, and having them copy it into their books. I got to draw today, so I drew a house and a family and a car, and a sun in the sky, and trees and flowers, and they dutifully copied it all down as best they could. We sang some songs, we taught them “Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes” which was easy to translate into Swahili and sing in both languages. In Swahili it is “Kechwa, Mabega, Magoti, Vidole.”

After school ends at 11:30 with the bell clang, Mr. M and his wife and we help the children cross the busy highway, and everyone heads home.



Here are some of our kids walking home. Seems like their houses are pretty close by. We walk about 1 km with a few of them since they go the same way we do to the bus stand (dalla-dalla) to take us back to Moshi Center where we shop or eat lunch and then take another dalla-dalla to the hospital.



(I don't have favorites, but these cuties would come close - both named Sabrina)