Written by Melcom Braganza
After completing Taligao MOP Junior, We ( Jewel, Niju and I) set out to pay a visit to Cacra for the first time. I was super excited to go Cacra Village. I heard about Cacra village at the Goa University where I study and also from the Bookworm team.
The moment I looked out of the Bookworm van and saw the Sea, I was overwhelmed with a happy feeling. I always wanted to see Cacra village. I must say that the natural environment of Cacra Village is so fresh and positive. As soon as we reached the village, people who knew Bookworm van were very happy to see us but there were some people who didn’t recognize the Bookworm Van and gazed at us with some amount of suspicion on their faces.
Some children, who knew the Bookworm program, were very happy to see us back. They were quietly sneaking at the back of the van to check out whether we had the material that we use to tell any story to them or whether we are going to give them something but unfortunately we did had any place to sit and do a story session. So we decided to stroll out to find a suitable place for us to conduct our session.
Niju Mohan took me and Jewel to the beach area where the original Cacra MOP was started. I was so happy to see this location. It is the perfect location to conduct a story telling session except there is no place to hide from the sun. I was very amazed to see the beach. The moment I was on the beach my feet decided to bury themselves in the sand ! J
On our second session in Cacra and we were hoping that we will be able access Cacra community temple, But unfortunately the Cacra temple which is in the process of construction will pick up pace and cannot be used. So we approached the Sarpanch of Cacra who was kind and generous enough to support to our program and allowed us immediate access to the community Chapel space.
The most important part about this particular session is that we instantly had a total of 11 children to participate , out of which 9 were boys and two girls. I think it is pretty good start. Soon after we formed our traditional story circle and sang our anthem song circle “Make a Circle”, we followed it with the routine MOP songs of Clap your hands etc. I realized that many children were shy to sing.
But once we broke the ice with the game, some movement and read aloud Five Silly Fishermen, the shyness was over. The children loved the story. They all enjoyed doing this activity of connecting words to fishing rods and knew a lot about fishing as it is a fishing village and we were learning from them!
