Peace Corps Week Fun

The Peace Corps first began on March 1^st, 1961. Each year at the beginning of March the Peace Corps celebrates its anniversary by having Peace Corps week. During this week volunteers usually find extra projects or ways to get out and perform services within the community. On Saturday, in honor of the occasion, a group of about 15 volunteers went out to a village on the south-west side of the island to hold a children’s arts and crafts day for the village that one of our volunteers lives in. We showed up with craft supplies to make masks and puppets and collages and stencil colorings and fingerpaint and playdough and clay and facepaints and all kinds of stuff. We got there about an hour before the event was supposed to start in order to set up and by about fifteen minutes after we had arrived a huge slew of small children were already eagerly awaiting our permission to enter and join in the festivities. The 200 or so children that showed up spent the morning going around to the different stations and engaging in all sorts of projects. I spent the morning painting the faces of a never-ending slew of children waiting patiently for their chance to be covered in paint and glitter. Then everyone sat down and had egg salad sandwiches together and all of the older children were taken off to play a game of flag football led by a couple of the volunteers- we have a set of football supplies that was generously donated to the Peace Corps by the Chicago Bears and it was great fun getting a chance to bring it out into the community and use it. While the older kids were playing football we organized games with the younger children and sang songs and just had a great time making lots of new friends. The day was really great and it was so much fun getting out in the community and spending time with a new group of faces that were so thrilled to have us there and engaged with them. Plus my face-painting abilities and ingenuity drastically increased as a result of all of the practice I got.