MAHER PAINTING PROJECT—PERFECT HARMONY

Photo credit: Rose Zulu

It was exciting to be back at Maher, the school where Zoe volunteered, and to see that the sturdy, roomy classrooms the foundation had funded were in full use. About seventy students were spread amongst the three classrooms and many of these middle-school aged kids would help us in the next couple of days paint these additions. We had just two days to complete the project, which seemed tight even to me, ever the optimist about the amount of work that can be done in a day. This year, though, we only had five volunteers, plus Monnix and I, and I wasn’t sure we could get it all done.

After precuring the perfect color of paint for the external walls—Principal Prisca Mumba brilliantly suggested that we find paint to match the bright uniforms the kids wear—we set off for Maher, knowing that the sun would soon be beating down on us. What we didn’t account for was a whole cadre of students and teachers awaiting our arrival that morning, ready to jump in and help us with the task.

The youngest students, with help from volunteers and teachers, set about painting in bright primary colors the old tires that form boundaries around the school yard. The older students grabbed brushes and paint buckets and headed into the new classrooms to paint the cement walls white. Our group of volunteers set to work on the external walls. It was a beehive of activity, and I was honestly a little scared to go inside and see what a mess the students had likely created. They were left mostly on their own that morning, with little to no supervision, and I imagined paint all over their uniforms and splattered on the new desks and chairs we had had built, covering the schoolroom’s concrete floor. When I did finally venture in later that day, it was pretty much as I feared, though the kids were so happy to have the afternoon off of classes that their enthusiasm for the endeavor overcame my worry about the mess.

Then, one of the girls started singing and not four beats later the whole group was singing in perfect harmony while they slapped the white paint all over the walls, and by extension, the floors, desks, and themselves. I couldn’t help but think that this scene in the US would likely play out much differently. For one, it would be much quieter, with AirPods jammed in all the kids’ ears as they listened to their own music, missing out on the simple pleasure of singing together. And it would likely be much more organized and monitored, with drop cloths draped across all the surfaces and blue tape neatly lining the window and door frames. And then I thought, would we even have kids missing class to paint? Probably not. Sad, really, to think of the fun our kids miss out on. Singing, painting, cleaning up. Yes, cleaning up! Later on, I witnessed another example of group harmony. All these same kids happily scurried back and forth from the water pump in the back of the school yard, diligently cleaning paint-encrusted brushes and rags. When I peeked into the classrooms, I witnessed a minor miracle, the paint was only on the walls! The desks, chairs, and floor had been scrubbed clean of all paint splatter, and every kid had a cleanish uniform to boot.