PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Construction
WRITTEN BY: Kate Elphinstone
Time continues to trick us. Already at the end of our second week, so much has been done and there is still so much more to do.
All of our weekends are booked- from horse riding through the mountains above Cusco to traveling through the Sacred Valley to Pisac Market and visiting one of the seventh wonders of the world: Machu Picchu. No photos can justify the reality of what we have experienced. But it is uncomfortable to be in a city where Incan history was destroyed by the Spanish, and is now being commodified by the touristic demand. The questionable balance between keeping the true sense of culture and exploiting it can't be ignored.
Cusco continues to hold its charm, though the constant harassment to buy from street vendors is wearing thin. As a tourist capital it means the comforts of home are catered for, with several restaurants and cafes run by Australians. Every day and night the streets of central Cusco are thronging with tourists. While a clean and (so far) safe city, the poverty affecting most of the society is obvious. Buskers entrap you with their music on buses and young children walk the streets at all hours, all days, arms loaded with bags of souvenirs to sell. This is when it hits that the poverty in their rural community is forcing families to beg in the city, where tourism becomes their lifeblood. We can only hope the children at our school won't have to succumb to the same fate.
This has been the week of memorising names and trying to form some kind of proper lesson plans for the five days. We have fallen into a routine and even the stomach churning bus ride to Ccorao feels normal, where standing side by side in the aisle is expected and a seat is a gift.
The faces are becoming more and more familiar, with some of the classes growing in size every day. This is more of a summer school for the children than a standard term. We have no curriculum to follow, which is both a blessing and a curse. Flexibility is good, but its hard to know if you’ve have begun at the right stage or what they already know. At times it is frustrating to learn as you go, but you learn quickly and are rewarded by something as simple as a child from your class greeting you with Good Morning instead of Buenos Dias.
We teach in groups of 3, and rarely with teacher supervision. We have a timeframe for classes, for example English 10:45-11:30, then Art or P.E from 11:30 to 1. The older grades are obedient and quiet. The younger grades are definitely a handful, but you almost always leave the classroom at the end of the lessons with a smile.
The lack of resources is striking. For example, the classroom for Grades 2-3 is equipped with only a whiteboard, small desks and chairs. All pencils, textas and paper in the class are what we bring with us. The children have a single exercise book for all of their work, and most of the class won't have a pencil with them to write with. We have had to engage our imagination and use inventiveness to get around all these little obstacles, which would not even be a worry in Australia.
The construction side of the placement has been slow going, with lessons always going overtime. This week ranged from mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow for the foundation of the wall to moving mud bricks 100m across a lumpy paddock. The altitude doesn't help and moving the bricks is akin to an interval training episode of The Biggest Loser. We're all a bit sore, but not sorry for the work.
All in all, seeing the children learn and improve in the space of two weeks is both rewarding and disheartening. There is the realisation that in this short space of time we really won’t make too much of a difference. Instead it’s best to focus on taking each day as they come.
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