A water bottle, some dried up plants, a bowl of water, a bibi, and a wholllle lot of patience...

What do all of these things equal? A basket weaving lesson!

Today we began our day with Swahili class and then traveled down a bumpy road to our basket weaving lesson. We met our basket weaving bibis (grandmas) to learn how to make beeautifully woven baskets and although some of us were better able to achieve this task than others, everyone tried and everyone had a lot of fun. Basket weaving (as you can see from the images in the gallery) requires a lot of patience because it requires following a pattern to wrap pieces of plant around a plastic bottle. In order to make sure that the design holds tight you must continually wet the leaves as you go along. Basket weaving requires a great deal of patience as it is a bit difficult to catch on to at first. Some of the girls in our group, like Sim and Hayley, were able to catch on immediately and did not need much help from their bibis, while others needed a little extra help but were able to get a hold of it eventually. Once you finally catch on it becomes easier to follow the weaving pattern your bibi began for you and it is quite fun to take part in some mindless work. Although we were not able to fully finish our baskets, our bibis will complete them and we will be able to travel home with them to keep as gifts for ourselves or to offer as gifts to friends and family. Our group is very excited to see our completed projects.

After basket weaving we headed to Ilula to have lunch and reflection. Then Nyalumbu Secondary School girls met us at the soccer field for their second day of coaching. The challenge for coaching today was that when the girls walked over to meet us at the field their entire school followed them. Because of this we had about 200 students on the field with us at all times requiring some of the members of our group to stay and coach the girls while others guarded extra balls and occupied the other students. The girls were able to successfully complete their planned stretches and drills and wrap up the day with a really fun scrimmage. Overall, it was a great day of coaching and we are excited to be working with the girls at Ikuvala Primary School tomorrow.

Basket Weaving Video:

That is all for today! We hope that you enjoy the pictures! (OH and we all voted that guest blog starts tomorrow instead of today!!)

xoxo Dee and the Iringa Session Two girls