World Map Project...Check!

The day after Christmas, I started a really big project with a local 5^th grade class here in my village.  We decided to paint a big world map on their school wall.  Most of the kids at the school don’t have textbooks, and definitely don’t have access to maps, so drawing a big map is a good way to teach local people about geography.  Many Burkinabe villagers can’t even find Burkina Faso on a map, much less France or America (most people think they are the same country actually)!  Overall, the project was a huge success and everyone involved had a great time!

Students working on drawing exercises

 The day after Christmas day, more than 60 students showed up at school at 7:30 in the morning, bundled up against the chilly winter wind (even I wore four layers)!  We started with drawing exercises, and the students learned how to look at a small, gridded picture and draw the same larger image.  After the exercises, we moved to the gridded wall to start the actual world map:

Moving to the wall...using school benches as scaffolding!

Students drawing their square

Though the students' drawing wasn't particularly accurate, several visiting PCVs and I spent the afternoon redrawing parts of the world map.  Tuesday morning, all the students showed up again, and we started tackling the paint job.  Easier said than done!  

 First, I mixed the paint, and the students were fairly tranquil.  However, when the paint was mixed and students were ready to paint, the students got pretty rowdy, all excited to do their share.  We painted the map in eight different colors, countries coded in a Peace Corps-affiliated World Map Project handbook.  

 With this handbook, the grid and the corresponding drawing of the world was easy to draw.  However, I made an executive decision to cut out some of the islands....whoever made the book decided to include every single place in the entire world!  During the map, there were also some little painting mishaps by over zealous painters, like when Chile grew four times its size and Russia took over most of Eastern Europe (perhaps the student was cognizant of the expansionist policy of the Soviet Union?).

Needless to say, I was relieved when another PCV, Brianna, took most of the kids over to play geography-based games!  The rest of us were able to complete the painting in relative peace.





At the end of the week, the students, PCVs, and I have officially completed the painting and rough world map on the wall.  It took several more weekends of work by me and sometimes other PCVs to officially complete the project.  

Painting done!

Map is completely finished!

The World Map Project was a huge success, and it was great talking with all the people that came by to see what we were painting.  The map spurred many discussions about world geography, and the students involved had a real sense of pride afterwards too.  I am looking forward to doing a second map in another neighborhood here in my village, though after the two, I think I'm done painting forever!