Week 2!!

Monday started with lots of planning for the next week ahead. Timetables, plans of action and workshops.  By now we knew that most of our plans will be changed and adjusted as we go – it is hard to plan your ‘program’ in The Gambia.

On Monday evening we held a meeting with workers who volunteered to help us with construction of the tyre structure for the playground. Out of 5 people who agreed to come only 2 came to the meeting, but despite that we had other people joining us which resulted in 5-7 people on site each day - Aliou, Freedy (Mussa Corr), Ebou Jawara, Kebba Senghore, Modu Corr, Faye Modu, MJ.

We asked everyone to help us with the construction plans and ideas, as we believe local community knows their weather conditions best. After  few minutes of conversation we were able to come up with the construction plan and even get more ideas for different structures and play spaces, sketching, conversations about materials, but mainly respect for each other and each other’s ideas.

Vicky and I didn’t come to Mbollet ba to proceed with our own vision and idea, rather to work together with local community on ideas and final outcome.  I was surprised how much more we were able to achieve just by listening and communicating with people.

Construction took 3 half days of work (8am till 1pm), and ended in trying out of 2 different ideas using tyres, on two sides of concrete tunnel. Right now what is left is cleaning and painting the tyres (as requested by the community). Our team volunteers from the village  took the initiative starting from planning all the way through design and  construction. I believe we wouldn’t be able to proceed with works so quickly if the final idea was based on the sole vision of 2 individuals coming from abroad. In fact this week made us even more aware of the work we need to do and the ways of doing it better – by working with community.

Over the weekend we visited Albreda-Juffureh Tourist Information Centre and managed to have long and honest conversation with Nuria Sanchez (one of the architects working on the project) about participatory design and community involvement in the building process, not only in Albreada but in different places In Africa. We knew that there are lots of projects which don’t consider communities needs and issues. This conversation helped us to asses our current work even more and come up with more ideas for the feature. Thank you Nuria for the great conversation and your time!

In the afternoons we organised several workshops with the children. On Tuesday we were making spoon puppets and played with them in a house made out of fabric. We realised that kids like the process of making, puppets got designed, named and later we held a ‘dance party’.
Another trial that day was a ‘den making’ which at the end turned out into something very different than we expected. Our den fabric was used to hide under, making tents, running under and on top of it, or playing a dragon. 

The same scenario was used on Wednesday when we added big mango baskets and cardboard boxes to the whole mix. There was hiding in the baskets – in side and under, imaginary car rides using boxes, woven tunnel with colourful plastic paper to look through, den making. Workshops were scheduled for around 45min, but in the end it lasted 1.5 hours. We also had conversations with the kids after every workshop, asking what they liked, what they didn’t and what else they would like to have in their own play space.

In the society where kids are expected to work and help with household duties from a very young age we discovered that given the opportunity every child can PLAY, IMAGINE, DRAW and they are more than capable to feed into the  design of their own play spaces.

Next week we will run more workshops involving older children as well  -  to help us design the play space. And over the weekend we will held the exhibition where we will show everything we did to the community so that they can decide what they like or not, what are their worries and finally help us design the space. TEAM WORK! But that’s for next week...