The dead mouse, frog juice and other kindergarden tales.......

"Working with children is good for the soul" a friend once uttered those words to me and it's a mantra I often repeat and believe. They are natural, they speak the truth and most importantly they are not yet corrupted.

Kids on the revolution

Directly after the revolution we had a circle to discuss matters with the older children (the 4 and 5 yr olds). It had, had a big effect on them, school had been closed for 2 weeks and a lot of their friends had left the country, a lot of them had heard gun shots at night and all of them had sensed their parent's fear and worry. They had grown used to having the news play in the background and many had not left the house due to the curfew and the security situation outside.
So what did the children have to say about things???.......
Well all of them were familiar with the name "Mubarak" and that he was somehow "bad". One Egyptian boy  put his hand up and told us all about the looting of a local shopping center; "The people went and took things from Carrefour, they broke everything and took everything without paying"
A German boy  interjected; "Yes because Mubarak stole all the money so they couldn't pay"
The first boy, who I assume has pro Mubarak parents said; "No,No!! it's all Omama, Omama is taking the money!!" With Omama he meant Obama.....
The discussion session ended soon after and the children enjoyed the running around outside which they had so missed during the revolution's darkest days. In the following weeks the pro regime boy taught the other children pro Mubarak chants which was bloody hilarious as we often had a big group of European blond kids swinging on the swing and chanting at the top of their lungs, very surreal indeed. Over time the chants changed and became pro military "The people and the army are hand in hand" this was a very popular one and still rings in my head 2 years later. When the Egyptian people grew tired of Military rule the chants changed yet again, now the children were shouting "Down with military rule". The school year came to an end, the original "revolution" children moved on to different schools and the chanting in the Garden stopped.
The events in Egypt still touched the children though, I once caught a boy throwing stones so I called him over to discuss this, I told him that it's very dangerous and not at all acceptable behavior..... he looked at me confused and said "But Bryony, in Tahrir the good people are throwing stones at the bad people"  hmmmm I was speechless, what could I say to that? His observation was spot on, I took the easy way out and said "Indeed they are but we are not in Tahrir".
Recently the power cuts have been unbearable and this too has left an impression on the children; a few weeks ago I overheard two 3 year old boys discussing the matter: Boy 1 "Morsi is taking the electric" boy 2 "Yes, Morsi needs to leave" adding a kicking movement to strengthen his point.
Children really do absorb what's going on and they cope with this through role play, reenactment and discussion.

 

Animals, reptiles and insects.....

I always adored watching the different interactions with the different insects and animals they came across in the garden, those interactions ranged from very funny to downright disturbing.....

Frogs, frogs, frogs...

We had a lot of frogs in the garden and the kids were of course always fascinated by them, they followed them, observed them, built habitats for them and caught them.
One boy liked them so much that he placed them in his pockets and forgot about them... this was only discovered when his poor mother was sorting out his jeans for washing and found his pockets were full of dead frogs! After hearing this we installed a no touching rule and were quite strict with it, of course rules are made to be broken.....
We had an old fashioned water pump in the back of the garden and the children were always very creative in their use of it; they put leaves inside and made "leaf juice", they put toot (mulberries) inside and made "toot juice" some even tried to make "stone juice" and we teachers marveled at their creativity and encouraged them to try out different materials.... this was all well and good until 1 boy (the frogs in the pocket boy) decided to make frog juice!! I wont go into details but it was certainly a big mess and we were more careful with the juicing activities from then on.

Lizards, "snakes" and the dead mouse

 We also had a lot of small lizards, the children didn't catch them as they were very fast but they enjoyed observing them, one boy recently screamed "look, look a dinosaur" upon seeing one. Oh to see the world through such innocent eyes.....
Once a group of children approached me saying that they had found a snake, at first I thought they had found something snake shaped, I mean they were always stumbling upon monsters and things like this, but they had a serious look in their eyes so I followed them to investigate. "The snake" was in fact another lizard type thing that had tiny, tiny legs and a snake like body, I didnt see the legs at first so freaked out a bit but what really impressed me was that the children's natural instincts had told them not to touch or catch "the snake" but rather to stay far away and get a teacher.
The same instincts were present when they stumbled upon a dead mouse in the bushes, they were not interested in touching it, just very interested in knowing why it was dead and why it was in the garden, we asked them what they thought and they decided that it was either a cat or that the mouse had eaten something bad. The mouses cause of death remains a mystery to this day.

The unfortunate beetle

We had plenty of bugs, beetles and flies, well it was a garden after all. We always told the children that outdoors was their environment and that there was no need to kill any insect they found outside. Once we were observing a big beetle, the children were very interested and discussed where the beetle might be going and how long it would take him to reach his destination. It was a group of around 8 children and a nice informative activity, well it was nice until a very boisterous 2 year old came over with a big plastic shovel and crashed it down on the beetle so hard that it splat all over the pathway. It happened so fast that there was no chance of stopping him and the boy was very proud of himself indeed.In his eyes he had done something good he had witnessed adults killing cockroaches at home so he felt he had done the right thing and rescued us from the evil beetle :).

Cats, dogs and a monkey.... yep a monkey 

we sometimes end up with stray abandoned kittens which the children adore feeding and nursing back to health. The neighbors have a dog which they observe but most interesting was the monkey we found staring at us from the papaya tree. The teachers were as thrilled as the children at the sight of this. He must have grown tired of papayas though though or maybe he just didn't like children as he stopped visiting and now gets his breakfast from one of the teachers who lives a few houses away.

This past 4 years spent working with children has certainly been an enlightening time for me. I never would have thought it would be my thing but they are so natural, so real and so funny. I got to observe true human nature before the outside world corrupted them and I think through them I learned things about myself that I never would have otherwise.
It's time for me to move on with my life now but I will never forget this 4 year stint as a kindergarten teacher and I will never forget the lessons these little humans have taught me.

Giza Zoo a pile of poo!!

It was Easter, I had time off and no travel planned, all of my friends were on the beach and I was sat at home feeling very sorry for myself indeed. Spent a few days sleeping then thought "no, bugger this, I am going on an adventure!!". Sent my ex room mate Emily a message and we made plans to go to the zoo. Now, my friend Mike had  repeatedly warned me about the Zoo, but hey I am stubborn and well I like to see things with my own eyes.
In the morning I took a look at the Zoo's website which actually makes the place look like a nice day out. Here is the link http://www.gizazoo-eg.com/ , looks nice right? So here is the grand entrance to the zoo,

it is located on one of the  busiest streets in Giza not far from the Israeli embassy (I mention this because recent protests took place in front of the Embassy and the Army sprayed tear gas, this gas drifted over to the zoo and the animals could be heard howling!) We paid the "foreigner price" for our tickets which was 20le, I wonder how long this has been the case as wherever I read reviews on the Zoo written by foreigners, they always states the entrance price as being 1 or 2 pounds, I was quite worked up about this but Emily calmed me down and said "we are here now so yalla" or something to that effect.
Once inside, the first thing we saw was a caged Persian cat! We began to laugh at this and wanted to take a photo, unfortunately a group of young men saw us laughing and thought that two laughing foreign females simply had to be easy sluts and proceeded to bless us with profanities, we decided to vacate the area and failed to get a picture of the cat.
A few minutes later, I accidentally made eye contact with a teenage boy, I am actually quite good at not making eye contact these days but every now and then it happens, and damn don't I pay for it when it does, these boys followed us for ages, shouting at us and making vile gestures; I would say they were the worst behaved animals in the Zoo. We tried our hardest to shake them, we threatened to call the police (big laugh, this was post revolution and there wasn't a police man in site), we tried to shame them in front of others (also a big laugh, people stared and laughed at us), we tried hiding in the Hyena house but it was far too depressing. Finally I started to take pictures of them and they fled. We headed over to the lions....

which I think were the most sorry looking things I have seen in my life, the cage was a concrete prison smaller then my living room and the inmates were bored out of their lives and skinny as hell pacing back and forth, their manes were matted and it was just cruel, cruel, cruel, I was truly disgusted, at this point a zoo keeper asked if I would like to pay a few pounds to hold a lion cub; I looked at him with my very best "you are an idiot" face and walked away. The next stop was the monkeys and if you look at the following pic carefully you can see the zoo keeper encouraging punters to poke the monkey with a stick. Do I need to say anything further on that matter?

A few minutes after taking this shot, we saw visitors poke a bear with a stick and feed the monkeys cookies and chips. I was at boiling point and it started to rain so we though it best to leave and went to eat cup cakes in Zamalek.