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Matjana Preschool had its annual excursion for the first time since 2018. Difficult circumstances, including the COVID-19 pandemic and lock down, as well as financial challenges caused the delay. Although the teachers tried to organize a trip last year, the first year out of COVID lockdown, it didn’t work because parents weren’t financially ready to send their children on a school trip and teachers we had not fully organized everything need. In recent years the preschool has seen a lot of changes of teachers, which made planning and organizing the excursion difficult — the new teachers were not sure where to go or how to organize an excursion. So we are very pleased to announce that in 2023 we have returned to the tradition of ending the second semester with a successful excursion. The Matjana kids had an opportunity to visit various to places around Eswatini including King Mswati III International Airport at Sikhuphe, Hlane Game Reserve and Mpaka Railway Station.
Organizing an excursion is not easy
Teacher Khetsiwe, who was organizing the school trip, said, “Organizing a school trip is not easy, no wonder we couldn’t make it last year. You cannot believe that we started the preparations on the first day of school this year (January) but things only came together on the last week/days before the trip. ”The teachers said their aim was to get all the kids to go on the school trip and ask parents to contribute ‘something’ to cover the costs of their child going for the excursion. It works best if the money is paid in advance so that we can book the transport in time and inform the places where we need to go — they always need the number of kids coming in advance. Although not all parents managed to pay for the school trip, we manage to ensure all the kids enjoyed the fun and educational benefits of the trip, by using school funds to cover the shortfall.
The excursion began at 6;30am
In Eswatini most school goes on excursion towards the end of the second term, which is why we went at that time. Because we knew there would be lots of schools in those places that day, we arranged to leave preschool at 6:30am, so as not to miss out on seeing anything. This meant parents had to bring the kids to preschool because it will be too early for them to walk alone. Some students walk even more than 3km to preschool, usually a little later in the morning with older children who attend the primary school.
“The kids prayed loudly (even the ones are usually quiet) and were noisy for the better part of the morning and were dancing to music which the driver played as they drove.They began to be more excited when they got to the tarred road. Teacher Khetsiwe said, “It was amazing to see kids getting exciting when seeing even small things like bridge.” She continued to say some of the things which the kids were happy to see are things which we all haven’t thought they didn’t know or could be happy to see them. “Who could have thought kids would be happy to see a ‘black road’ as some of them were referring to the tarred road?”
We had breakfast along the way and arrived at the Game reserve around 10. As we approached the Game Reserve we saw an elephant, which the kids were very excited to see and took a picture of. “When we arrived at the Game Reserve, there were over 30 schools, so we were sharing one game ranger with 5 other schools who told us all the rules like do not make noise. Our poor kids were now whispering but they were told not to make noise. Anyways, we took the tour around where we saw lions, elephants, rhino and other animal that the kids had learnt about by looking at pictures in class, but never seen in the flesh before. We then quickly left to the airport because we were running out of time. But when we arrived we were told to wait for an hour as there were no planes on the ground, but one was on its way from Johannesburg. We were taken to a big room where the kids would view the airplane nicely when it came in to land. After the wait the plane arrived and the kids shouted, “Here is an airplane”. Thank goodness there were no rules about noise at the airport!Time was already not on our side, and we rushed to the Railway Station and by then the kids were tired and sleepy. Fortunately, they found train about to go. They were shown the different rails, and how the trains changed from one rail to another. A few minutes later the train departed and the children jumped up with happiness seeing the train moving. It was nice to see the train and rail besides being tired and running out of time.
Our next stop had to be Matjana preschool. Parents were worried because it was getting late. We arrived back at around 1900hrs and suspect many of the kids got carried home by there parents, because they were too tired to walk. Teachers said they were also happy that they managed to take their kids to an excursion despite it not being easy to prepare for. “We felt bad last year that after having told the kids that we will go on a trip, we failed to make it a happen,” Teacher Khetsiwe said. “As teachers we have learnt a lot from organising this trip. We will use the experience for the next outing which should be around August 2024.