Shangilia - Last Trip

The donation box is presented
(me on the right)

Today was my last trip to Shangilia this school year. We planned to have a party with the kids, so everyone brought food with them. In addition, five teachers accompanied us today (Mrs Nichols, Mrs Jones, Mrs Hargrieves, the french teacher, and Mrs Lavender).

When we arrived we all headed inside for introductions, the kids greeting us happily. An ISK student presented Shangilia with a donation from ISK, hidden in a large brown box. The manager was very pleased with this, and the kids let out a chorus of "thank you!"'s.

example of folding game

Afterwards, we split up into groups for art, music, drama, and reading. I decided to do art, as it's something that I am not too bad in, and enjoy helping the children with. There was a fairly large group for drawing, and after we had handed out paper and pencils we decided to do the folding game. This game consists of folding a piece of paper three times to hide the picture on the sheet and different people drawing the head, torso, legs and feet of a person. When the piece of paper is unfolded a funny picture has been created!

At first, the kids found this hard to understand, but I think that they had gotten the hang of it by the end of the session. However, after a while they stopped playing this game and decided to merely draw pictures and colour them. I was soon surrounded by a crowd of kids asking me to draw different things for them - "Draw me a monster!", "draw me a donkey!", "draw me a girl!". It was a little overwhelming, but I loved seeing their smiles when they collected up the picture and ran to show it to their friends.

Afterwards, we decided to give out the food. We set out more than 100 little plates and put, on each one:

The kids eat the food

- A rice krispie treat
- Popcorn
- Crisps
- Biscuits
- Chocolate chip cookies
- Candy
In addition, Lucie and I poured out Fanta, Coke and Sprite into plastic cups for the kids (there was a slight problem when we realised that there weren't enough drinks for all the kids, but it was soon resolved when we found some containers of dairy milk that someone had brought along).
After we had got everything set out we started to hand them out. The kids all looked very pleased with what we had collected for them, and they ate it extremely quickly!

As we waved goodbye and left for the bus I was definitely very disappointed that Shangilia was over. I enjoyed getting to know the kids, and the whole experience really opened up my eyes to the privileged life that I lead. I loved seeing the strength of these children, their determination and hope amazed me. I hope to return to Shangilia next year!