Food Day at Precious

The theme of the holiday program today is ‘Food’, always a tricky topic when the current month is the Islamic festival of Ramadan and Sammy Juma, the only Muslim student in Standard 3, was looking through all the pictures of food from around the world whilst not able to have morning porridge or lunch. My teaching partner Craig and I asked if they knew of any specific foods from different countries; ugali and sukumi wiki were called out a few times for many European countries, however Edwin was certain that every country in the world except Kenya ate snake; he took it quite hard when we had to explain that not many people eat snake and it is very rare if they do.

Mister Craig with Standard 3 watching "Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs"

I was impressed that they remembered the French delicacy of frog’s legs and snails and Spanish paella, which we had covered the previous week during our cultural day. It is extremely satisfying to know that some of the things we say they do actually remember! After going through many different countries’ foods and explaining the different taste buds located on our tongues we decided to show a film as they had concentrated (as much as they could anyway).

Different Foods

To keep on with the ‘Food’ theme, we showed the animation film, ‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs’ where food falls out of the sky. They were amazed and kept asking, ‘Madam, please take us to this place! We really want to go!’ Unfortunately had to explain to many disappointed children that we could not go to a place where ice cream etc. falls out of the sky because it does not exist. They did enjoy the rest of the film without too much pushing and shoving in front of a small laptop screen. All in all a very successful day without the usual shouting, screaming, fighting and jumping off desks which is normal fashion when teaching in a Kenyan classroom! I won’t hold my breath for the same good behaviour next week though, however everyday is different when going to school and not knowing what you might have to deal with that day is always an enjoyable challenge!

Hayley Bilton August 2011

Food Day at Precious