One of my more recent projects has been the World Map Project. This project was started in 1988 by Barbra Jo White, a volunteer serving in Dominican Republic at the time. 21 years later Peace Corps volunteers around the world, myself included, are carrying out her vision in their communities. Read the full article here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.medstories.view&news_id=1536

Over the course of two terms, with the assistance of community members, teachers, and pupils, we now have a very large world map painted on the side of one of the classroom blocks at Mwala Basic School. Though it was time consuming and a bit stressful at times, it has been one of the most rewarding things I have done so far.

I had thought of doing it earlier in my service, but was always discouraged by the rough cast (stucco) on the lower portion of all the exterior walls. I decided to mention it to my Head Teacher (Principal) Mr Ziwa sometime after my Mid-Term Conference and once he saw how simple it would be he said he would run it by some of the PTA members. Within a week he told me I could get paint and that the parents had offered to remove the rough cast from the wall that we wanted to paint and to buy cement so we could plaster any damage we might do to the wall with the scraping of the rough cast. I was impressed with how eager the members of the PTA were to assist with this project. Usually right after harvest (which is when this part was taking place) most families are busy cleaning and sorting their maize and other crops preparing to sell or store them. Within a few days time however the wall was cleared off, patched and painted with an undercoat.

Mr Ziwa is a pretty influential person in more than just my school and community, he is also the Head of the Head Teacher’s association in my whole district (72 schools) and the Chairperson of the PTA of a boarding school in Katete, our neighboring district, where his daughters attend high school. These responsibilities call him away from the station often, he decided that for this reason I should have specific teachers assigned to assist me on this specific project so that we would not be delayed if he was absent. Although I had 4 teachers who were my co-facilitators, all of the teaching staff played a role in making this project happen and had good ideas on how to approach certain aspects that I found challenging.

I had to do a lot of work in the beginning to ensure that things would run smoothly once we started applying paint to the wall. I should preface this by mentioning that Art is not in the Zambian curriculum. It is encouraged that teacher’s incorporate drawing into their notes (and all aspects of teaching) and that they also encourage their pupils to do the same, but as of now there is no designated time in the time table designated for an art class. The school has about 500 pupils right now and while I wanted pupil involvement, I didn’t know how to approach selecting them. My teachers announced the project in their classrooms and invited those interested to attend two instructional classes I was having so they could decide whether it was something they wanted to be a part of. About 14 came, I taught one class showing them how to draw a copy of an image using the grid method and then another showing them how to enlarge using the same method.

I had to attend a workshop one weekend and had left the teachers with instructions to paint a coat of white over the undercoat and told them we would measure the rectangle and paint the ocean blue on Monday. I got back on Sunday afternoon and to my delight they had taken the initiative to paint both the white and blue. The next step was putting a 2.5mx5m grid on the wall, each grid square was 9cm…it is big. It took us 2 hours to make a proper rectangle, then over the course of two other days two hours each to draw all the grid lines and number them. The drawing could begin! I took the time to draw Europe and the top few sections of grid that I knew pupils couldn’t reach. Right around this time it was exam time for the end of Term 2 and since I wanted this to be a project the pupils participated in, so we put our work on hold until after the holiday.

I faced some challenges starting work up again straight into the drawing and my group of 14 pupils dropped to 10 and only about 8 showed up consistently, but it turned out to be a sufficient number as I was delegating work as soon as they finished and even then sometimes could not keep up with them. I found they got carried away with excitement at time and wanted to finish one thing and move on to the next, so my biggest job in drawing and painting was quality control. Drawing was done in less than two weeks and paint took just over one. Most of this was kept track of photographically and can be viewed on my facebook page, under The World Map Project, so I won’t ramble on anymore and let you enjoy seeing the project unfold. The only thing remaining is to write the country names with sharpie markers (which I just got,) so I’ll add more photos when it is fully complete. Enjoy!