The finished playground

Here are some images of the finished playground

Look at the lovely painted walls behind!

All aboard the bus!

Speaking Tubes are extra popular

When you put tyres on the top of the van, not the bottom

So ... a busy (not even a) week since we got here and a lot has happened. We have found a team of very willing and able villagers to build the playground and they have got cracking. To date, work has gone really well on painting the blackboard walls, with some lovely designs (palm tree, suns and boat blackboards); tyres have been made into towers to climb with landscaped spaces for chdilren to explore; bantabas are built and work has started on huts which will encourage the chidlen to communicate in new and different ways. THe speaking tube is up, and is already being used by the children. 

So next week will see the building of a role play bus, finishing the huts and hills, swings and blackboard walls. A really exciting addition is  a boat which is being made by the boatmakers in Barra. This is a really exciting addition and one which the children are really excited about. Also, a mud/clay/messy kitchen is being installed.



Essa and Moussa deserve great credit for getting a drum activity made and painted and working out exactly how to make it. They are now researching how to make a hanging xylophone… 

Highlights have been watching the loading of the tyres on to the top of the bus to bring home, and laoding the inside with mahogany for the bantabas. Also, on that trip to Barra, we met the pigs on the beach whilst finding the people to make the boat. As always, people always know someone from their extended family and can work out a way to get things done. 

Journey to Mbollet-ba and first days in the village

Aga on the ferry with Abdou Sarr

Bye bye to Banjul and off to the North bank 

In the village: Ground nuts (peanuts) having been harvested and being sent off 

The lovely 'Crocodile Pond' which is right next to the village and oh so peaceful! 

One of the two shops in the village: George's shop, with everyone gathering around outside, either waiting for the bus, or just chilling out. And George is sitting outside listening to his radio. 

Ok so getting ready to go now. We have raised a lot of money (about £3780 so far which  is amazing!). If anyone wants to donate, please click here

We spent time at Salusbury Primary School on Saturday selling cards and clothes to add to the funds and it was great to get the support from everyone there. I sold my 'Animal Alphabet' cards which I have printed and show examples of things that happened in The Gambia when we were previously such as the earwig invasion, the donkey in the bedroom and frog in a boot!

Gathering things together now. I have a shopping list and gathering images and ideas together - exciting!!

Aga and I are back to Mbollet-ba in the middle of December to finish the co-creation of the playground there. 

So to recap what has happened so far....

In 2016, Aga and I took part of in the building of the nursery classrooms as part of OGS. We noticed that the children started to play with the way the space had changed and we made some trial tunnels and hills which they loved.  Since then we have worked with children and adults in a series of creative workshops over 3 weeks in April 2017. We also worked with the villagers to create further prototypes for the tunnels and hills. Children explored the existing spaces as well as being introduced to new forms of play. At the end of the 3rd week we created a proposal based on the children’s ideas and we held an exhibition to share the ideas with the whole village. 

Then at the end of last year, St James Place Foundation generously donated £2500 to OGS to build the ideas generated with the villagers.  The villagers will be central to the next stage of turning ideas into reality; designing and building the play space for the children. Aga and I will be visiting the village in December and working with villagers to make the visions come alive. 

An important aspect of the project is the use of locally sourced and sustainable materials – like palm leaves, bamboo, earth blocks and soil.  We don’t want to build a ‘western’ type of playground, rather we are proposing something sustainable, cheaper and easy to maintain, which protects  local environment.

We plan to reuse existing structures and  recycle unwanted materials – like car tyres. Lots of those materials are abandoned and unused in the fields around the village. This will allow us not only to reduce the costs of the construction, but will also bring positive change by cleaning local area and introducing recycling ideas in the village.

Through play young children learn valuable skills for a rapidly changing world - skills such as problem solving, empathy through role-playing and collaboration. We want to make a safe space for nursery children to play, so that they can extend their skills. Ideas which have been developed with the village include:

• Role-play areas such as a hut and a boat which reflect the location of the village which is near to swamps and marshes, which open to the sea. Children were very excited when we showed them photos of boats to play in and started offering very creative ideas for play.
• Hills, tunnels and ramps will offer children to move in different ways and extend their imaginations. They will be able to make dens and play spaces within this area as well with items from the Mobile Play and Storage
• A mobile play set made from woven palm. This will be  be used by teachers and  can be moved around the playground. This is based on the trials where children were seen to use a woven palm tunnel, baskets and fabric with great imagination and the teachers saw many opportunities for how these materials can be used to link learning inside and outside.
• Speaking tubes to encourage children to communicate in new and different ways.
• Swings  designed to encourage children to use them collaboratively.
• Large blackboards and quiet comfy spaces for reading and writing - we observed children outside of the classrooms wanting to read and write, so we want to create spaces which will support and encourage this. Spaces may be contoured by moving sand or creating small seating areas. 
• OGS’ purpose is to promote and sustain the practice of global educational exchange between developed and developing countries. We do this through supporting educational establishments to deliver high-quality international learning exchanges that fulfill goals in formal and informal learning. We aim to benefit young people, teachers, and education institutions in developed and developing country settings.

We are looking for further funding to make sure we can include as many ideas as possible. To support this please go to my Justgivng page here https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/vicky-cave1

Reflections on the exhibition by Aga

‘Ideas are like rabbits. You get couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen’. John Steinbeck

I think this quote from John Steinbeck explains a lot about our work in Mbollet. Everything started from one small idea which later got adjusted, expanded ‘reprogrammed’ and evolved in ways we  didn’t expect. It turned out that trying to establish ownership, mutual respect  and cooperation is not an easy task, but is definitely worth the hard work and effort.

Our three weeks of work in The Gambia concluded with a 3-day-long exhibition, which was part of the consultation with community process. We presented the construction of the tyre prototype, the photos and drawings from the workshops with the children and initial ideas for the playground. There was lots of printing (which turned out to be not an easy task and quite expensive), pinning, taping, hanging, cutting. Grade I and II children helped us prepare an ‘interactive’ map of the playground where different elements can be moved around according to the wishes and visions of each person. I need to say – it was great to have them working with us, we would not be able to prepare everything on our own. It also allowed us to involve more people in the preparations.

The aim of the exhibition was to present the ideas and have a conversation about the next steps.
On Thursday 27.04 we held a meeting with women from the village – mothers, aunties, grandmothers. The main reason for us to do it was to understand the issues and worries that women might have about the playground. Our conversation soon changed and involved different ideas about the design and construction. We received very valuable feedback about the sand we used for primary idea – the sand hills made in December. It was great to get to know new faces and to see the women we had worked with with before.

Unfortunately the attendance during the other two days of the exhibition was not as high as of Thursday mainly due to lots of marriage ceremonies in the village. Another group of women came, and few of the parents. Similar conversations were carried out as during the first day. We were told how much people appreciate that we involved them in the design process and considered their opinions.

As for Vicky and me every now and then we had to stop ourselves from pushing for our own opinions and ideas and make sure we follow the line we both agreed for at the beginning – to listen to others.

Now back to drawing board! Vicky in UK and me in Senegal for next few weeks.

I am very grateful for the eye opening experience this time, both in Mbollet and in Senegal. This time I had a chance to meet more people and understand more about the living conditions and daily struggles. Now when I write this post I think about ‘Heal The World’ by Michael Jackson – song that I was listening to when I was growing up, we all can make a difference, as long as we will realise we need to respect each other. We are all one. As someone told me in Senegal ‘Africa system: when I can I will help you, because one day I might need your help also’. Big THANK YOU to everyone who helped me to understand what is important

The rest of the week 3 and workshops

 

The rest of the week we ran workshops with all the nursery children and also with Mr Corr's Grade 1 and 2 classes. We played outside using tape measures, magnifying glasses, took photos, drew pictures, made dens, and made models for a map of the playground.

Here's a snapshot of what we did

Week 3 - Monday 24th April

Well it was a pretty busy week, but we knew it would be! We had a great time running workshops with the nursery children and started off by observing them in their playground on the first day back at school. All the children were in great spirits, happy to see each other again after the Easter break. We observed them playing in the tunnels, on the tyres and then slowly introduced different elements that we had been playing with in the previous weeks. The fabric was the first to come out and was a huge success - for about 20 minutes most of the children were all under the three pieces of fabric, parading around the playground chanting different songs, and playing games with each other. It seems hiding and moving around is big hit.

After that we brought out the woven palm baskets and cardboard boxes. The children were pretty inventive, imaginative and collaborative, playing games and experimenting with different ways to use the items. They covered themselves with the fabric inside the baskets, put the baskets inside the tyres and climbed in all together and played games. The idea of enclosure and feeling snug seemed to appeal.

Because it was the first day back at school, many of the other classrooms were being prepared and so children from other classes in the school started to come into the playground as well as the nursery children over the course of the morning. It got fairly busy and raucous and really highlighted the need for a fence to protect the space for the younger ones. It also made us very aware of the fact that older children were really keen to play (they loved the tyres and making games with them) and started us thinking about the need to create something for older children outside of the nursery playground. One of the teachers, Modou Corr, said that he thought that if there were tyres the children could come up with their own games and ideas for play in another part of the school.

We also noticed that the youngest children wanted somewhere to read, write and be quiet. some of them were sitting by a fence, a small group were writing balanced on a tyre and another boy quietly observed the proceedings in the playground from his snug position in a cardboard box!

We also tried out the 'speaking tube' which is in fact a length of bendy plastic tube around 20-25 metres long where children can speak in one end and someone else can listen at the other. The children had a lot of fun with this, singing songs and chatting to each other. They also turned it into a game and started skipping and jumping over it. This made us think about making one out of metal which could be played with like this.