We were not able to engage all the learners today and many of them were running around fighting and making a lot of noise. Very soon we had a neighbour come in and complain that there was too much noise and that he couldn’t watch TV. We initially tried to pacify him and send him telling him that we will keep it down. However, the discussion with him turned into a larger group and many of the members of the community were questioning what we were doing. There seemed to be some animosity towards some Muslim learners who according to them could not learn anything and were only there to play.
While we have had some issues of outsiders interfering with the learning and learners getting into fights, it was sad that there was so much backlash from the community towards the method that we were following. The members of the community were insisting that we should hit the children and make sure they study before any playing. They also wanted us to maintain a strict attendance register and someone even suggested getting ID from the children. Some of the members of the community threatened that they would talk to the organisation that was giving us the space and shut down the program.