This year the grade 11 went to Hanbantota, a city located on the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The trip lasted from the 24th-28th of January. On this trip our goal was to refurnish a local primary school and donate supplies to the children.
A few weeks before the trip, our group 11.1 or the "Cha-group" organized the groups to work on certain things like murals, painting, and playing with the children. The organization was made with everyone in our group having their say.
I was chosen to be in charge of creating and painting the murals by my classmates. Personally, I was surprised that people nominated me to be the leader because I've never done anything like this. Although I was surprised, I gained awareness that I did have the ability to create a mural and could undertake this new challenge.
The school we went to wanted a few ideas for different walls. I came up with the subjects of a carnival, a playground, and an aquarium for three walls. The playground went on the big wall, and the aquairum and carnival went on two small side walls. I want to note that I didn't make certain sketches for each mural. Instead, I made
everyone include their own idea of what to put in (for example for the playground mural I made Camille put something she wanted which was a dog and a sun). Since I was the leader of the murals, I tried to put some of my focus each mural people were making and helped them out. All of these things allowed me to collaborate with
others and succeed in taking this unfamiliar challenge as well as developing new skills of working and talking with others.
Preparing the wall by sandpapering some bumps before we started painting.
A picture of me painting a rainbow on the scariest ladder ever. Mo got the easy job of sitting and watching me. :P
Although making a mural seems like an easy job, many problems arose that my group had to work with. A big problem we encountered was the shortage of paint... particularly green (which was for the grass of the playground). Even with this challenge we came up with alternatives like mixing some water with the remaining green paint, changing the flat landscape into hills, and mix the yellow and blue paints to make a green. I was really proud of my group of showing perseverance and commitment to getting this mural done. In the end, our mural turned out well made and beautiful! We were all proud of ourselves for that!!
Our beautiful mural!
Each time before we would do the physical work of refurnishing the school, everyone had to play with the children. It was difficult playing with the children because of the language barrier, but in the end it was a nice experience. In the www during grade 10 I didn't volunteer to play with the children because I was uncomfortable with children. However this time I was able to do better because I learned a few Sinhalese words and drew with the children. I was put into this new environment and forced to adapt. In the end I think I gained the new skills of speaking horrible Sinhalese and making a fool of myself to make a child laugh (once).
Me in the middle with the children. Sadly, not the happiest photo.
This action and service was carried out for two days. It was a great experience as we engaged with issues of global importance of giving the less fortunate better facilities and having a great time. :)
