Monday, 5am: that’s when the new year firecrackers started. It was the humans’ turn to wake up the roosters. They were quite upset.
So the four of us are taking a four day vacation. Though I don’t know how relaxing the first day will be: we are spending it in Paramaribo (incidentally, it’s where I had stayed stranded for 6 days). Apparently it’s illegal firecracker grand central station during new years.
Earplugs!
Route St-Maurice. This is where four older sisters live. These four girls plus their friend are the members of the junior youth group that wrote the previously mentioned song.
Important tidbit number 1: the doors at their house are kept open to let a breeze through.
Important tidbit number 2: dogs here are mostly strays. They are not considered cuddly. Even if to our North American standards they are. They’re considered mangy, dirty, and dangerous (with good reason, as rabies is a problem in some areas).
So what do you get when an adorably cute (Cute. CUTE. Golden Lab) stray puppy wanders into the house?
A bunch of screaming girls.
And of course, though my first immediate response when I saw it was to open my mouth and genuinely exclaim, “Oh, what a cute puppy!”, I ended up screaming like the rest of them. But not at the dog: at their screaming which made me jump out of my skin. They were all screaming and running away. And of course laughing themselves silly after that.
Sigh.
Of course, the puppy jumped about twenty meters high and skidded away. The poor thing. I think we traumatized it.
“As regards the celebration of the Christian Holidays by the believers: it is surely preferable and even highly advisable that the friends should in their relation to each other discontinue observing such holidays as Christmas and New Year, and to have their festal gatherings of this nature instead during the intercalary days and Naw-Ruz.
Further, there is no objection to Bahá’ís’ attending religious marriage ceremonies of their friends and relatives or take part in festivities usually connected with these events …” — (The Universal House of Justice, 1998 Dec 16, Traditional practices in Africa)
There. I said it. I don’t celebrate Christmas unless I have friends and family who invite me to a celebration. Which was the case every year, except, of course, this year. This was my first time with no Christmas tree, candles, presents, over-abundance of Holiday music. And you know what? I still had a very nice Christmas.
Why my 25th of December was nice anyway:
(let it be known these two classes were scheduled by the students themselves)
Why my 26th of December is following suit:
“…The art of music is divine and effective. It is the food of the soul and spirit. Through the power and charm of music the spirit of man is uplifted. It has wonderful sway and effect in the hearts of children, for their hearts are pure and melodies have great influence on them … It is necessary that the schools teach it in order that the souls and hearts of the pupils may become vivified and exhilarated and their lives be brightened with enjoyment.” (‘Abdu’l-Baha: Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 52)
I’ve been quickly reading my blog, and I’m sad to see I haven’t put much up since the viola died. I have a feeling people have the impression I’m extremely sad now because of that. Though devoid of an external instrument, I’ve been able to find a few musical outlets …
For one, I’ve previously mentioned that I was working on a rap with a few boys. Well, not only are they working on it – they’re beating the project senseless! I now have to make them come tomorrow so I can do some one-on-one polishing of their texts (make sure the lyrics are … ahem … clean, for example). They are quite hard on themselves and have high expectations. I need to make sure that I have just the right amount of constructive criticism, and the right amount of encouragement. Easier said than done!
My second outlet is with a bunch of girls, with whom I pulled out a short prayer and suggested we put it to music. Well. They were churning out musical ideas so fast, my pencil couldn’t keep up as I wrote down the notes. They had great ideas, and all I had to do was to make sure it all worked out together.
With these two projects now, on top of all the classes, I have to create a beat and bass riff for the rap, and a piano/band accompaniment for the prayer (as they want to perform it on World Religions Day, on the weekend of the 19th of January).
Yep. Not lacking in musical challenges.
Sure I miss the feel of the instrument, but I had to get over it quickly and get on with what had to be done here and now. And no – the music school down the street did not want to lend me an instrument. I guess that service might have been abused in the past or something. But thanks to a quick phone call to an Ottawa violin maker, my credit card, and to my wonderful family, I now have the necessary repair materials on their way. Bob and I will have a blast doing this.
Now that it’s been close to two months, I’m starting to feel comfortable with the people living here and their ways of life, and sometimes I tend to forget I’m in another culture.
Take lunchtime, for example. I’ll be chatting away with the kids, and we’ll be talking about things like how it sucks that their school teachers beat them for discipline (that in itself is a small shock too). Then Mrs. Foofoo comes out with a plate for me. Up until now it’s always been rice with a nice portion of chicken legs submerged in a tasty bouillon. But today I noticed there were extra appendages to the leg – it was in fact a whole marinated chicken claw (nails, skin and all).
Now, I know I have friends in Canada who come from all over the world, and have already had chicken feet (Dim Sum?). So I asked the oldest girl how you eat a chicken claw. “Oh? You just pick it up and suck on the skin.” Ok, I can do that. She then giggled and whispered something in Saramacca to her older brother. When asked, he translated for me: “The previous teacher that came last summer would usually take two bites and hide the rest under the rice!”
Well. After that, I had no other choice but to go for the whole nine yards. It was, of course, much tastier than I had imagined. It still gave me a jolt when I picked it up and made its fingers wiggle, or when I felt the claw nail scratch me as I ate it.
Alright. I knew that I was risking my instrument’s health by coming down to the equator. I expected maybe the bridge (the little beige piece of wood) folding up and eventually collapsing, and the tuning keys to stick a bit.
Not this.
THAT is where the neck and the body of the instrument meet. They are two separate pieces glued together. If you look closely, there are four cracks close to the rim, one on each side. These cracks were there already. So, the instrument had been broken previously, then fixed. Poorly, apparently. Though it sounded decent, this was the instrument’s weak point.
Consequently, the whole fingerboard collapsed.
See how the black board is laying on the rest of the body? IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THAT!!
So, after quickly discussing with Bob (my host for the year), who’s done a lot of detailed woodworking, we decided to take the strings off to release the tension on the neck and fingerboard and all to avoid more damage. Guess what happened when we tried to turn the pegs (tuning keys):
PEGS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BREAK OFF IN YOUR HANDS!! Pegs are also supposed to be made of strong ebony – not rosewood or something like that. It’s so humid down here, the pegs inflated and weakened something bad.
I was forced to snap two of my strings to relieve all of the tension off the neck, since two pegs wouldn’t budge.
How did this happen?
Last week, rainy season started. Everyday, I noticed an increasing amount of resistance while trying to tune the instrument. Then yesterday, it was badly out of tune and the tuning keys were completely stiff. So I put the viola back in its case without playing it, hoping I’d get a better shot at it tonight, when I didn’t have classes to prepare for the next morning.
I opened the case tonight, and voilà. It had caved in on its own.
The BAD news: the closest violin maker in the continent is in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Forget that. I also need to order new pegs via Internet. Who knows when they’ll get here, too.
The GOOD news: Bob HAS been doing a lot of precise small woodworking, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have played with making and fixing guitars earlier on. In a week, when he’s free, he’ll work on getting the splintered peg out, then re-gluing the broken neck with water-proof wood glue (thankfully it’s only the glue that died – it’s all mucky, having absorbed too much moisture). I also had enough sense to bring a second set of strings, so I can replace the two that I had to snap off.
Also, there’s a music school down the street, and though devoid of a violin teacher, they have violins, and ALSO have previously lend one to a gentleman doing the same work I’m doing now, also having resided at Bob and Jackie’s like me. While previously I was faced with the possibility of not playing for seven months and a half (GAK!), I’m now hopeful. Ish.
Now I understand why Jackie told me to bring a cheap instrument. Rachel K., if you’re reading this, thank you for taking care of my good violin while I’m away.
The trick to good discipline: keep them busy. Many experienced people told me this before, but now I believe I’m in a better position to understand what they meant. Keep them moving. Make it super interactive. Keep them feeling like the lesson is one fun game. Have them say, “I can’t wait ’till she’s here!” and “Darn, you have to go already?”.
I’m not at that point yet, with one class being the exception. These kids aren’t quite angels, but they’re sweet. And they hate leaving (this is the class we give in our own home), and they always come to the house waaaaaaay earlier than they’re supposed to (I have to make them wait outside as I finish preparing the class!) (except if it rains). Anyway, the last class was nuts. They were crawling all over each other when I had them move from the table to the couch. We got drums out and a kid put a quote to a beat, and there was lots of giggling and laughing. Laughing should be a law in this kind of class. Really. You learn so much more when things are fun and interactive.
What I’m talking about here is something one of my precursor here in St-Laurent called “controlled chaos”. Kids love it. But you MUST still have a set of rules, so if things go out of hand, that’s when you have to remind them of either sitting down, sharing the markers, or whatever (that’s the “control” part of “controlled chaos”). Thing is, if you try to control them too much, you lose them. One kid will lose patience, another will space out, a third will tease someone, that someone will react, and bang, you’ve got negative chaos. Not only that, but you spend more time on strict discipline instead of the lesson itself, and in the end, you wonder if they’ve learned anything.
So, after setting clear decent rules, that’s when the good “chaos” part comes in. You make things interactive. You divert their attention to something totally new and fun often, so that, in the end, you don’t really need to use your set of rules, since they don’t have the time to get bored or distracted enough to start teasing or spacing out. And, you let them loose a little. Let them get the jiggles out. Let them be a little more creative. Even if it’s just for a minute. They’ll feel like they were allowed to be themselves just for that time.
Seeing how successful yesterday was, I tried the same class format with today’s class, which is one of my tougher ones. It worked like a charm.
So now, I need to rewrite most of my class curriculum into something more interactive. Roll-playing stories, games with a meaning (ever heard of the “trust fall”?), etc …
I guess that’s what made all of our favourite teachers back at school so special. They were probably the ones who took the time to adapt the materials to make it all more interactive.
Hopefully I can emulate that.
Jackie said most of the youth that came for a year of service here ended up in Education. I can see why.
So! Instead of weighing everyone down with words again, here are some images other than flowers and skies (and cats): PEOPLE! (finally!)
My stay in PK-10 this weekend was definitely not uneventful, but if I still find the stories relevant in a few days, I’ll write them then.
It was a dark and RAINY night in PK-10 …
(click on picture for the lot of them)
“As to the question of evil spirits, demons and monsters, any reference made to them in the Holy Books have symbolic meaning. What is currently known among the public is but sheer superstition.” (From a Tablet of ‘Abdu’l-Baha: Spiritualism and Psychic Phenomena, p.3)
There is a fine line between respecting other people’s beliefs and dispelling superstitions. This is a challenge that I face with one of my children’s classes.
First, I must press on the fact that this class is a Baha’i children’s class, and I have been asked by the mother, who is also a Baha’i (but has 12 children and has just enough time in a day to feed, dress and clean all of them) to teach the children the Baha’i values, views, and beliefs. So, in any other situation, I would probably let it slide, as I want to respect other people’s beliefs even if I don’t agree with them.
As Baha’is, we don’t believe in what today’s popular culture calls “evil spirits”.
“In regard to your question concerning evil spirits and their influence upon souls, Shoghi Effendi wishes me to inform you that what is generally called evil spirit is a purely imaginary creation and has no reality whatever.” (From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer, November 1, 1934)
So try telling 6 kids that there is no such thing as a little man named Chucky that comes out when it’s very windy, and if he touches you, you disappear with him. Especially when the story comes from their mother.
(After a brief discussion with the kids, I realized that, no, this does not concern the popular American horror movie “Chucky”, featuring an evil possessed doll, though it bears some striking resemblances.)
Why the mother would tell this story, I can only fathom: I know for a fact a lot of robbers do their work on the very rainy and windy nights, and take advantage of the excessive noise to pry their way into the house even when the owners are there (it happened to my hosts a few years ago). Perhaps it was to keep the kids inside and safe from robbers (again, 12 kids is a lot to control on your own, so a scary story may be effective in this case). Or perhaps it IS a traditional story (modified to include a modern name), and the mother believes it too.
Either case, I’m going to have to discuss the subject with the mother to see where the story comes from, and discuss the Baha’i view – and consequentially ask her if she, as a Baha’i, agrees with it, and if not, if she wants me to drop the subject with the children.
I know this may sound like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. Kids believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy back at home; kids will believe stories until they are taught to think things through logically. The thing is, the stories here aren’t positive (Santa & Co. bring you treats and presents and money). People here live in fear of curses, and keep trying to hex families they don’t like (one of our friend’s family got “hexed” a few weeks ago by another family who wants their land: they put a bunch of dead animals-on-a-stick by the creek, their only source of water, along with candles and whatnot). Another example of a hex about a week ago: in the middle of an intersection nearby lay a cast-iron cemetery cross, flowers in a jar, candles, and a dead snake.
Families and tribes here have lived for centuries according only to traditions and superstitions. Even now, given the choice, they will do what is the tradition as opposed to what is the logical thing to do because according to them, the tradition is always right. The thing is, the world and the society evolves, and sometimes those traditions, if not those superstitions, don’t. The original reason why those specific traditions and superstitions arose in the first place may not be applicable anymore in the society they’re trying to live in today.
For example, the dead animal hex: putting dead rotting bodies by the land’s only source of water, therefore contaminating it, would have been a good way to effectively force the people living on the land to move (and later taking the land for yourself). But because people now know to boil water, and can disinfect it by other means, they don’t move. Yet, the “hex” was still placed on our friends’ land, and they are still afraid of the magical effect this “hex” will have on them and their land anyway (well, you have to admit: who wouldn’t be upset about having animal corpses strewn across their land).
The point is, stories like little “Chucky ” are only the tip of the iceberg.
It’s not my place to force people into believing anything. The only job I have with these classes is to teach them what the Central Figures of the Baha’i Faith have taught us. What they believe afterwards is up to them. I just find it sad that those beliefs are the source of many fears and many, MANY family feuds.
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