Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The World Map Project


My postmate and I decided to do the World Map Project at the local high school. We are doing this project for two reasons: 1) Unlike in American schools that have walls covered in diagrams, charts, and art work, the walls of schools in Cameroon are completely blank, and 2) Some of the students have never seen a map and many had trouble pointing out which continent was Africa.

The painting of the map went well until we started getting help from the students. As a result, some of the countries are now missing as they were painted over with the wrong colors, some new countries have appeared because two colors were used on one country, and I’m pretty sure Brazil is never going to dry after the technique of globing paint was used. Also, all the islands around Canada were painted, as in the sea was painted – not the actual islands. It turns out half the project is going to be devoted towards touch-ups. In the end, however, everyone had a lot of fun, especially since many of the students have never painted before (no art classes here). And the map eventually turned out all right: