GeJiu Service Trip-Part 3: The Minority School

The Kunming International Academy annual spring service trip, a chance for our high school students to obtain service hours (a requirement for graduation), took us to an orphanage outside the city of GeJiu, about a five-hour bus ride south-southeast of Kunming.  This is the third installment in a series of picture about that trip.  This particular set of photos looks at a day-trip  to a nearby village school that is populated predominantly with minority children and how KIA's students served them with a one-day fun fair.

Let's face it:  the average student does not view school as fun, regardless of how nice the school is.  On a good day, interesting, educational, even possibly fascinating, but not fun.  Now imagine that you are a student cramped in a room with nearly forty of your peers, the only color on the walls come from an ornately designed chalkboard and the brownish-grey smudges left by time and the hordes of hands that have come within these same walls for years before you.  The classroom's light emanates from either the smeared glass of barred windows or the eight to ten bare white light bulbs dangling from dusty wires suspended from the ceiling.  Paint chips off the walls daily. Your just glad that your classroom received the brand new metal and corrugate desks with matching benches, which are a great deal better than the old, rickety wood box desks with narrow plank benches that used to be in there (and are still used by members of other classes).  No, this classroom picture does not instill the idea of fun.

However, as luck would have it, a bunch of foreigners are supposed to arrive and turn your school into a fun fair, complete with games, clowns, balloons, funny animals, and  other fun activities.  This will not be a normal day; this may actually turn into a fun day of school.

Above is a close approximation to a standard Chinese classroom.  However, there are a few things missing:  twice the number of students, piles of books on each desk that would obscure these children's faces from view, and those beaten wood desks with their uncomfortable wood benches (each wood bench would be half the width of the benches you see and would not have a backrest on which to lean).  Evidently, just having a foreigner present to take these students' picture was enough to bring smiles to their faces.

A fun fair would not be very fun without games.  Brandon (grade 11, USA) administrates the beanbag toss game.  Just visible on the ground in front of the mesh basket is a box of Oreo "sticks" that were given out as prizes.  While the beanbag toss and the other games were meant to be competitive, every child received the prize for trying.  As you can see, some of these minority students actually come to school dressed in their minority outfits--the girl in the foreground tossing the bean bag and the girl waiting in line on the right of the picture.

My mother, who has volunteered as a clown in a children's hospital ward, will tell you that not all children love these red-nosed masters of mirth.  However, let's face it, a fun fair would not be very fun without a clown, and Zach (grade 10, USA) certainly fits the description of a clown.  In his suit of many colors and his red nose, he fashioned all sorts of balloon creations to hand out to the students of the school.

Sometimes fun requires one to sit still and be attended to by a very steady hand.  Kiera (grade 9, USA) painted designs on students' hands and arms.  Although each student looked quite serious during the application of the paint, once the design was complete, the smiles of pride accompanied pulled up sleeves to show off their unique body art.

Occasionally, fun arrives in the form of a new story spoken in your own language by someone who looks like you.  Kevin (grade 12, USA/Canada, but whose parents are originally from Kunming) reads Ni Shi Wo de Hai zi (translated You Are My Child), a story by Max Lucado that introduces these students to the idea of how much their Creator loves them.

In all, this school day registered off the top end of the fun scale for everyone involved.  Games, balloons, art, and stories swept away the mundane, at least for one day.  Hopefully, the power of the fun and the love these foreigners displayed will continue affect the lives of these students until we can return.