Children’s chimpanzee drama day
Today was also another special and lovely day as the Yebo volunteers got up early to prepare and go over their drama play activities that they had planned for the children to take part in.
The volunteers had previously planned their stories and activities and were running through the drama plays before the children arrived.
The plays had all been directed to the ages of the different children and the groups that they had worked with the day before. The volunteers had also made up a chimpanzee song to teach the children
to the style and tune of 5 green and speckled frogs, which was turned into…5 little chimpanzees!
The aim of today was to focus more on the chimpanzees and their stories. The volunteers began to really use their knowledge of all the things they had been learning about chimpanzees in the past week to work on todays project. The individual chimpanzee stories given to us by one of the keepers was used to make a drama story with actions for different feelings. 
When the children were in front of the chimpanzees, we had them all seated on the steps. At first they were again told about the life of the chimpanzees and how they were bought to UWEC sanctuary. The volunteers began teaching them the actions and feelings in the stories of the chimpanzees which were being told to them. They appeared to enjoy this and picked up all the actions very quickly. 
After spending longer with the chimpanzees and learning more about them we went back to the room where we were doing all the activities. Each group put together with the children some great stories about the chimps and their lives and made these into drama plays where they used ther masks and music shakers that they had made the day before. These were great and all of 
their characters really came to life. The drama was performed to all of the people in the room which were the volunteers and other children. They then proceeded to give us an amazing display of music and drumming which we all found amazing.
Blackie who is one of the primate keepers who is getting involved in the 
project spoke to the childre afterwards and asked them questions such as what have they learnt in the past 2 days. The children appeared to be very responsive and positive in what they had learnt. They spoke about taking care of one another like chimpanzees do, and that they can have similar lives to the chimpanzees who are also in an orphanage just like them. Blackie 
spoke to the children more about the link between their diffrent traumas and the chimpanzees traumas and how they can see that the chimpanzees have been through very hard times being abused , orphaned etc and that the children will see that they are not alone in what is happening to them.
this was a great day for all involved and the positivity of the work really started to shine through. We hoped that the past 2 days have been beneficial to the children and have also moved the project forward, to the next developmental stage.
By val reece, July 26, 2010 @ 12:19 pm
Just been catching up on all your news. Sounds amazing and great to hear all the work is coming together.
Look forward to hearing your news from SA. Wish l was with you all.