Wanted: 100 Pounds of Modeling Clay and 100 Dictionaries

May 10, 2018

Wanted: 100 Pounds of Modeling Clay and 100 Dictionaries

About an hour ago, LouElla and I took a swim in the hotel pool. It was a great way to cool down after a very hot day. Kakata's City Hall, the location of our event, gets pretty sweaty by the end of the day. The room is "air-conditioned" by a few indoor ACs that line the walls. The doors and windows are often left open. Add over a hundred bodies and the hall gets more and more uncomfortable with each passing hour.

Today is Thursday, May 10. The day is winding down. I am writing this at 6:01pm WAT. It is still morning in California.

Day two of our presentation is complete. The same crew made today's event happen: Tim, Jay, Calvin, LouElla, and me. Today's set up was much smoother than yesterday's, a good sign for what lie ahead. The focus of delivery was the misunderstood word and more work with clay demos.

Before I detail the day, a word about modeling clay and dictionaries. In short, Liberia doesn't have much of either. I brought with us from Florida a five-pound block of modeling clay. This may be the only modeling clay in the entire country. Consequently, most of the time we spent with the clay was allowing students to feel it and squeeze it and make shapes with it. They'd never played with anything like it before. At first, they were enthralled with its squishy pliability. They laughed, their friends hooted. Then when they got the chance to create specific things with their own hands and see them take shape right before their eyes, they were downright captivated. It was a magic moment.

Students make their first clay demonstrations

It is a similar situation with dictionaries. They are few and far between here. They need hundreds of them. Teaching how to clear words without dictionaries is a challenge, to say the least. One shipment of 100 pounds of clay and 100 dictionaries, in the wake of our presentation, would revolutionize every school in Kakata.

Much of the presentation on the misunderstood word centered on the Liberian pledge. Like American students, Liberians know their pledge by heart but lack a full understanding of what it means.

Here are many pictures from today's activities.