A former recipient of one of CRP's micro loans, Ahmed has become the Art & Music Activity Group's newest teacher. As Ghazwan spends nearly seven days a week working with CRP doing translation etc., we all decided that it was best to find a new instructor for the children's art and music group that meets once a week.
Despite thinking that maybe the children would have a difficult time adjusting to to this new environment and a different leader, Ahmed's lack of hesitation towards the children seem to make the children even more comfortable and enthusiastic than before.
This transition, however, was a bit staged and incremental. This Friday both Ghazwan and Ahmed were here at CRP to lead the activities together. To Provide Ahmed with a sense of how the day works as well as to allow for him to see what materials are available to work with in the coming weeks, Sasha and I first planned the day out with Ghazwan in English so that he could clearly translate everything into Arabic for Ahmed.
The youngest children first participated in a blow-painting activity which constituted pouring a few different colored paints on a sheet of paper, and then blowing the paint around using a straw in order to create different abstract shapes. The uniqueness present in each child's painting was very representative of each child's individual story. Some children blew all the colors together, while others blew each color in different directions, clearly separating the colors from one another. It was quite interesting to see the children express their personalities through a straw. After taking a short break and making sure none of the children were near hyperventilation from all of the blowing, we moved on to some real fun...PLAY DOUGH! The children were each given white ball of play dough we had hand-made the day before. After every child had a round little ball in front of them, the fun was just around the corner. The children's eyes began to light up when they discovered that inside their plain white ball of play dough there was a blob full of color. From pink, to yellow, to aqua, the children used the color in the middle of their play dough ball to create one big blob of squishy color. After the children had a chance to discover and mold their own colors, we suggested to them that they politely ask and share their colors with those people sitting across from them. A boy with a yellow play dough ball would give half of his dough to the girl sitting on the other side of the table who had a purple ball. The children's enthusiasm grew even greater when they started to mix the colors together, creating a swirly, colorful, squishy blob. Before making their final shapes with their play dough, the children took about 5 minutes to identify the colors that made up each of their blobs. While we had considered doing this activity before the kid's had exchanged colors, it was even more interesting and challenging to see the children work a bit harder in identifying the individual colors seeing them combined. While it took several failures on our part to successfully create these blobs that the children would use, it was well worth our struggles to be able to witness the mess and smiles these green and yellow, and fuchsia blobs of joy created.
The music session this week did not go exactly as anticipated, but with music as with any other activity we include, there is always room for changes and improvement. Much more comfortable with the idea of playing and playing loudly, it is probably in our and all of the parents' best interest to eliminate the flutes and recorders until further notice. It is our plan to purchase more drums for next week's session, and then use only drums and harmonicas in the coming week to better the children's sense of volume control. The flutes will hopefully be integrated back into the program as soon as the children are capable to play them at a volume not so damaging to everyone else's ears.
For the older groups, the main activity was Pointillism. While I had no previous understanding of this specific art form, Sasha and Ahmed led the way. As the children had chosen to use just a white sheet of paper, an outline of a face, or a coloring book picture of say a pony or spider-man, Ahmed translated as Sasha demonstrated. The children used Q-tips to make dots to create or fill in the outline on their paper. The kids dotted everything from rainbows and sunshines to sad faces and olive trees. I was in awe! Although many children were at first naturally inclined to drag the Q-tip across their paper to draw the picture, Ahmed was very good at explaining exactly what it was that Sasha was doing. Just watching Sasha, with his more than competent art background and skills, Ahmed was able to understand her using other forms of communication, body language and such. I have really started to see, specifically by watching Sasha and Ahmed interact, that the language barrier between many of the volunteers and the native Arabic speakers poses no real threat when it comes to the kids' creativity. Just by watching, the children are able to do, and just by doing the children are able to discover and express a sense of peace and happiness in their lives even if it's only one day a week.
For the final 30 minutes of the day, we laid out the brown sheet of paper nearly half filled by now, and just watched them go at it. Although there will still be possibly one or two more weeks needed for the children to complete this mural, it is really quite amazing to let these young individual's tell their stories with a paint brush. As the group seems to have filtered in several new kids each week, the mural only gets more creative and unique. "We Love Iraq", the phrase filling the center of the paper has begun to express itself like never before. From self-portraits to Iraqi flags to depictions of their previous homes and friends in Iraq, this mural tells a story more personal and inspiring then any other I have seen.
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