Go Team!

Our usual breakfast meeting started promptly at 7:30.  Sadly, we were down two team members as they had to make their way back to the states.  Assignments were given and rides were coordinated; we are a well-oiled machine.  Some highlights from the day include:

A group of six went to Castries to follow the Primary School’s chorus final competition.  We are happy to announce that they placed first out of the final five schools competing.  While the team was in Castries they had an opportunity to briefly meet the governor general, who was at the competition, and were acknowledged for the work Global Volunteers is doing in Anse La Raye.

The preschool children were missing Sherry, the volunteer who left this week.  The children were also aware of the new roof that was put on over the weekend and some reported that their dads were part of the group who helped make it happen. 

Michelle went to the daycare alone, but luckily the supervisor, Ms. Frederick was back from her training class.  It was still chaotic trying to manage 24 children between two adults.  Michelle, at the start of the morning was given 8 three year olds to work with – a simple task of coloring - but that proved to be too much to handle. 

Julie and Dave, the Earth box team, reported that boxes were transported to the primary school, and that they have created a detailed lesson plan for future teams.

The secondary school team worked with teachers, trying to figure out how they work with failing students, and how they graded and completed student evaluations. 

The Roving caregivers had the opportunity to meet with three families, but were disappointed that they couldn’t have met more.  They also found out which families will be assigned their earth boxes.

The medical team stopped by a few schools to talk about hygiene issues, particularly how to wash the hands, put to music of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.  It was a real hit with the kids.  They also managed to make connections between the schools and the clinic for vision screening.  They had a chance to meet with the village council, a group of 30 people who are paid to clean and maintain the streets for health and safety reasons.

The Roving Construction guys made a stop at a few schools to fix some of the soap dispensers and/or add new ones, and load them up with liquid soap.  (The children at the daycare, right away, noticed the change and were excited to have a new kind of soap!)

After a hard day of working, some of the team groups assembled as usual, hanging at the outdoor restaurant at JJ’s, enjoying drinks and popcorn, while typing reports, surfing the web, reading emails, making some connections to the families we have left behind.  Some swam and relaxed by the pool, chatting excitedly about their day’s work.

One last incredible piece of news to report:  the first week in Anse La Raye was productive, and we knew that already based on all the great stories that the individual teams reported - we worked hard.  However, to put a numerical value to the amount of work adds a whole other dimension.  When it was a said and done, we as a team put in *drum-roll please* approximately 1209 hours of work.  Go team!!!