celebration day and heading home

The project is finished and we celebrated by exhibiting all work produced around the school. Parents and siblings of the children involved in the project joined us to see the work and speeches were given (and translated by Jarmo). It was very sweet when 'The Director' announced to Jo and I that he was very happy with the project and that he commended our efforts to see the project through despite us both feeling very lost at times due to the language barrier. I said a few words aimed at encouraging the children to continue in being creative and told the teachers and children that an exchange like this is so good as we have learnt much from our work with children in a different culture.

As we drove away in the most battered bush taxi yet, I looked behind to see the children's gleeful faces waving us goodbye...it felt very emotional and this will be something I will take with me and never forget. That all folks'..

shells, photography and stencils

The children decorated shells and arranged the finished pieces into patterns. They then took photos of the shells displayed in unlikely places :)

We then used stencils to make patterns on the beach and to show the phases of the moon

painting

mixed media workshops and painting

Creating collages using beads, tissue paper and paint...

Painting the block colours of the wall:

rain and pain-t

The roads of Pikine are flooded due to the rain! As we drove through the neighbourhood we saw some of the children from the project from our taxi window. The sweet smell of bread from the boulangerie enters the taxi and I feel a little self concious from all the stares and shouts of "Taobab"- whiteman....two goats nuzzle up to one another and I am happy

The school playground is a swamp and I remark to Joanna, "there could be a crocodile in here"...serious swampage. One slight disadvantage to working in rain is the fact that your shoes are drenched and by the end of the day my wrinkly feet are barely recognizable! Thousands of tadpoles are swimming around in the puddles..

Then with the help of our lanky interpreter, very long arms, we got to work and have started painting :)

night of horrors at the zebra bar!

Creatures in the roof, mosquitoes in the cabin, giant crabs and lizards, roaches on Sam's head!

la lune workshops

These workshops explored the moon and space!

We starting with textured paintings (using newspaper and paint) and each child painted a different phase of the moon:

We then created drawings inspired by space on to foam board and made prints on to material:

Finally creating large group pieces of the solar system: