The World Map

"Why is that kid eating paint!?"--me

Day 1. The World Map project in Gunzi. Where do I begin? Fun, educational, challenging but rewarding, and at times chaotic. We started the map on a Wednesday when the children coincidentally did not have school. We were able to hold a sanding and priming session in the morning and met again in the afternoon. Trying to organize and control 10 kids in our community center I began to distribute supplies and before I knew it the kids were priming a second coat before sanding the board down again. Oh well, no sweat. We decided to meet tomorrow when school was over and the kids told me they would make the 1500 box grid that would act as our guiding lines for drawing the World Map on our 2.5 meter x 1.2 meter wooden board.

Day 2 started around four in the afternoon. Only one person showed up at 4 o'clock which made me nervous. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. My counterpart's son 'Ke', who is the 14 year old version of my obnoxious younger brother Steven, and I were able to work together and trace the outside of the grid. Now the hard part, 6 other younger kids had just shown up and volunteered to trace the inside of the grid. This didn't go well. I traced the first two boxes of the grid as a reference--7x7 blocks of the 1500 box grid. Ke and I showed the kids how to do the work so all the lines would arrive relatively straight. I decided to let 4 of the kids work on this at once to try and speed up the process. Big mistake! We ended up with 8 crooked grid boxes so I had to kick all the kids out of the community center, erase the work that had been done and I would make the 1500 box grid tomorrow on my own while the kids were at school. I was happy they tried, frustrated at myself for trying to rush the grid with such young kids.

Day 3 I woke up and began working on the grid at 9 am. With only a 12 inch/30 centimeter ruler, I finally finished around 2 pm with the help of Ke's brother, Bodi. Bodi and I immediately started drying the outline of the globe upon completion of the grid. Bodi then drew North America and Greenland, and a girl named Aranza drew Antartica. An efficient, productive day. But the biggest day would be tomorrow. I had arrainged for the parents to let their kids work on the map all day and my friend in Gunzi, Marlene, had offered to cook up sweet rolls and lunch I had provided for the kids and I while we worked on the map.

Day 4 the kids showed up at my house at 8:45 am ready work 15 minutes before we had scheduled. When we arrived at the community center a kid named Fabio, who claims he is going to marry my sister someday, began drawing South America. I helped him with a few corrections but he got it pretty good. Bodi and a 6th-grade girl named Orlanda began drawing everything in the eastern hemisphere. Unfortunately, before we had finished drawing all the countries in pencil, two of the kids grabbed the Sharpie's and began outlining the country boundaries in black. This would prove to be problematic since not all countries had been drawn to scale and we had not finished drawing the Middle East and the southern most countries of Asia.

Day 5 I took one look at the map and realized we had fixed and created several new problems in the Middle East. If you look closely at our map, Afghanistan and Pakistan do not share a border any more. Problem solved. I also noticed that the entire continent of Africa was not drawn to scale which really disappointed me. The kid who had drawn Africa had did a pretty good job on the rest of the map but just couldn't line up the grid for this part. So I left the outline of the Africa continent he had drawn. Then I painted white over the inside of the country borders he had drawn and then re-drew each African country by eye. Since I have no artistic talent I was just trying to squeeze each country into the continent the best I could. Came out decent. So after spending some time fixing a few of the major fixable errors and then drawing the sponsor logos around the outside of the globe, we began painting with what we had drawn. We mixed blue and white to make an ocean blue and and were going to paint the outside border around the globe white. Up until this point Ke, had been on pretty good behavior. Now, he started his obnoxious rebel teenager act. I let two of the kids paint the oceans and bodies of water with the blue I had mixed for them. Ke was supposed to paint the outside white. He decided to mix some blue into the white. I snapped at him for a second and he told me he did it because it looked better. OK, not a big deal, it's a mere shade off, I decided to let him do it his way. Then, all of the sudden, he grabs the blue paint can and starts putting a deep, dark blue where we've been painting the ocean. I noticed this when he happened to kick over a can of paint onto the board. At this point, I had no patience for his shennanigans anymore and I told him to go home. He left, for about 10 minutes. Then he came back and did an awesome job the rest of the day... I'm not looking forward to having teenage kids of my own some day. So we painted all the bodies of water ocean blue and all the borders white.



Day 6, we arrive in the morning and something is wrong. We painted all the bodies of water ocean blue. There are some dark blue streaks smeared across the Atlantic Ocean...BRYAN! Yes, the hogiest(baddest) little 3 year old kid in the village had snuck into the community center in the middle of the night, found some blue paint that had been left out, and climbed up a table to get to the brushes we had put away out of his reach. He put his signature on our ocean. Of course, when questioned, he blamed his little 1 year old buddy who can't speak yet. At least he's a smart kid. So we began painting again. We started by painting America yellow. Problem, the yellow isn't dark enough to paint over the grid lines. We realize we're going to have to paint the inside of each country white, UGH! We're all disappointed as were ready to start painting. So I go to my house and bring the white back. While I was helping the kids who were painting the inside of the countries white, the little 1 one year old kid who was the cop out for Bryan starts eating paint. Eating paint! WHOA! I have to run him over to a faucet in the village and start cleaning him up. I send him home. After letting the white paint dry the kids convinced me we should finish up painting all the countries that night. We worked until about 7 pm at night with very little light finishing the painting. This was also probably a mistake as several of the countries which had been drawn to scale were now paint blobs. But, when it was done the kids were pretty damn proud. At leas they were happy.

Day 7 I arrived in the morning on my own. The kids were done drawing and painting. Bryan again had broken into the community center and smeared some of the paint across Africa. I decided to fix up the map a bit. It took me about 30 minutes to mix the white and blue paints together until I arrived at the same shade of ocean blue we had made before. I touched up the ocean and re-painted a few of the countries to make it presentable. I also stood guard at the community center to make sure Bryan wouldn't put his meddlesome hands on the paint anymore. And believe me, he made at least 3 attempts that afternoon.

Day 8 was the wrap up day. The kids and I began with a meeting. We talked about what went well, what could've improved. We agreed we had all rushed a few things too quickly. We all also agreed that we need to find a better place to store the board when we're done painting so Bryan won't smear more paint. After we got done meeting I let all the kids write a few country names on the board. Ke, my problem teenager, took over most of the work and did a good job writing most of the names. Finally, we took a picture infront of the nearly completed World Map.

Day 9 I showed up and put varnish over the map. This isn't interesting enough to write about.

Day 10 I had agreed to give the kids an English lesson for the first time in 2 months and we would be discussing the World Map. One of the better lessons I have had. We talked about North America, where the 3 Peace Corps Volunteers in Gunzi live in America, where some of the kids' favorite ball players come from and I wrapped up with the kids with a discussion about where the different peoples of Suriname originated. In the end, even though the map didn't come out perfect I feel it served its purpose to help educate the children about geography.