The night before, we were deeply immersed in preparing for the next day’s health teaching about handwashing. We were peacefully doing our visual aids, drawing and coloring this and that, when a cockroach decided to make its presence known and attack. Everything became a blur as we all freaked out and ran around the room in circles. Luckily, the brave men of Lourmah came prepared and decided to retaliate. Then finally, the cockroach was neutralized. Everything was normal again.
The next day, due to our stupidity, we rode a Bajaj and before we even blinked, we were already there; we hoped we knew better. But moving on, the teachers received us warmly. We attended the flag ceremony and witnessed their morning exercise, which the grade 5 led. They introduced us in front of the children. As citizens of Zamboanga, where every place was crowded with hundreds of people, the size of the school and the number of children was a new sight to see, as there were only a maximum of 20 students per grade, and only at least 7 teachers for the whole school. It was as if the students as well as the teachers were all familiar with each other, no matter what grade they were in.
This day was a very productive day since we were able to impart knowledge concerning one of the most cost-efficient and effective ways of preventing transmission of diseases, which is handwashing. It was fun to interact with children from different year levels. It was enjoyable to see them performing the steps in handwashing while following the Baby Shark song and us as we also demonstrate to them the step by step procedure of handwashing. It was undeniably a fruitful experience both for us, the teachers and the children.