Too much for my brain!

Wow, I’ve been silent for awhile, and I apologize to the few who keep checking out my blog.

First off, if you have read my Monday Log post, you may be aware that there was some uncomfortable discussions concerning equality of men and women. Though this was not the catalyst, it WAS the beginning of a very long 10 days where I had to re-evaluate the validity of some of my classes. At 20 classes of 1h30 each, I realized I need to cut a few – especially since I create more than half of the curriculum myself, and many classes don’t follow the same because of varying ages and/or levels. Let’s just say that breathing space is sparse.

And having the new perspective that maybe men and male students may not ever take me seriously, even as their teacher or their children’s teacher, put a new twist to things and gave me an explanation as to why a few classes were going wonky. I’ve never been directly disrespected (actually, they even tried to compliment me – though I’m a woman, I have interesting things to say, they told me). Anyway. This combined with feeling guilt for WANTING to drop classes, to deciding WHICH classes to drop, and finally dropping three (two were handed down to Philip, poor guy – but apparently he can and wants to take more), it was a recipe for an emotional roller coaster.

Result: With the help of the family with whom I’m staying, I’m making myself clear to co-workers that I have limits – I got to hand down a couple of classes to Philip – we’ll see if the attendance of a third class hits a bottom 2 again today and also cancel that one altogether – and I’m becoming vicious when it comes to attacking my special spare time.

Other result: I’m now taking time to spend more free time (it’s all about time, isn’t it) with some of the girls I work with, just as friends. The bonds being created are astounding. Went to Carnival with two young women and a little sister, and though this consisted of me driving around to pick up and drop off people for more than half the day, it was a nice change.

Carnival in a small town isn’t super spectacular – but the fact that they celebrate EVERY Sunday with parades and costumes and masks and having Amerindians wearing freaky gorilla masks and scaring children from village to village and having people all dressed in white with white masks eerily reassembling Ku Klux Klan and throwing flour at people, and having men dressed as women VERY well, and men covered in black shiny oil and hugging random passers-by … it makes it pretty funny to be there.

(more pictures to come soon)

And the result of all of this – forcing myself to slow down and get to know people better, saving some free time for myself, and having fun – gave me the initiative to do something I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do: a short one-page comic. With a beginning, middle, and end. I just need to colour it (and that may take an eternity – seeing I’m so excited about this, I’m showing you guys the line art).

So this is my cartooning debut. Be gentle with me.

Monday Log

8h00-9h00: Wake up, breakfast, get ready for 9am French writing tutoring with one young lady.

Fabled Breakfast Purple Fruit described in Tuesday Log.

It’s called a Star Apple.

9h00-10h15: Wait for lady.

10h15-12h00: Lady finally shows up. Had a great time. (She’s also tutoring me on how to speak the local Creole language, Taki-Taki – both of us are making progress, which is a good sign.)

12h00-13h00: Debrief about the past week (write notes, file electronic records of attendance, lessons taught, activities prepared, etc etc)

13h00-13h30: Lunch (chicken and kidney beans)

13h30-15h30: Answering to another slew of emails, and wasting a precious hour on Internet that I shouldn’t have wasted on Internet.

15h30-16h00: Went to the pharmacy, only to realize all shops close from 13h00 to 16h00. Shows how often I’ve been shopping around here.

16h00-16h30: Read a book completely unrelated to anything I’m doing here (The Wheel of Time, book 1, actually).

16h30-17h30: Fell sleep from too little sleep during the last few days.

17h30-18h00: Prepare JY class that’s been moved from Saturday night to tonight (the result of my birthday party).

18h00-18h30: Supper (sandwiches).

18h30-19h00: Commute (car). Stop to buy cookies for the JY.

19h00- 21h00: Junior Youth class. Students: 8. Topic: service to others. Completely huge tangent in the discussion: equality between men and women. Result: disaster.

I’m not the one who brought it up. They did. And it’s a hard topic to discuss fairly when each man here has at least two wives, and each wife stays at home and cooks and makes babies. I’m not kidding. Made me wonder why in the world they were even allowing me to teach them anything. Anyway. They ARE still great kids and a great little village. There are just things in their traditions that they haven’t even considered questioning yet, and that’s one of them.

Needless to say it was a rather emotional evening when I came home. (Not in front of the students. Ever. I’m hard up against flipping out while students are present.)

21h00-21h30: Commute home.

21h30-22h00: Discussion on cultural differences and views on roles of men and women in each of our different cultures.

22h00-00h00: Preparing for next day’s lessons. Bed.

Note: this was supposed to be my day off. That didn’t really happen. Must discipline myself to 1), plan Tuesday classes on Sunday nights, and 2), not do ANYTHING on Mondays (except the morning tutorials – those are fun). Really. So that I can completely relax, guilt-free. For example, last Monday I escaped for an hour and a half by the river to read, where there were no distractions whatsoever. I should do that more often.

Peaceful Reading Spot 

Sunday Log

6h30: Wake up

6h30-8h30: Roam around, watch Scooby-Doo with the kids (as they do this every Sunday morning – I’m actually starting to like it). Then the older kids watch something called Galactik Football (cartoon lovers, click here for a description), which has pretty nifty animation.

8h30-9h00: Class preparation.

9h00-10h30: French class. My favourite French class, actually. Students: 9. Topic: different verbs and common actions. The most awesome moment: I popped a surprise syllable dictation on them. (these are ladies that can’t read and write). ALL of them got the syllables perfectly. We are making progress! HAPPINESS!

10h30-11h15: Drive BACK home because I forgot something. Crud.

11h15-11h25: Pick up Sosie (girl from PK-10) and drive to the other nearby village, Boussiman.

11h30-12h30: Younger children’s class. Students: 5. Topic: helping others. Nifty thing: one of the apparently “troublemaker” 12 year old boys helped me with discipline. He’s never been trouble to me. Just hard to get motivated. And now I think I have him motivated. Yay!

12h30-13h45: Older children’s class. Students: 6. Topic: Boudhism/Bouddha. Presented to them the Golden Rules of multiple religions (click here for more on that). Drew mandalas with a brief explanation on using mandalas as a meditative device.

13h45-14h00: Lunch (rice, spinach-kind of thing, and …. armadillo.)

…
But it was good!

14h00-15h00: French class. Students: 7. Topic: same as above.

15h00-16h00: Advanced French class / deepening on the Writings of the Baha’i Faith. These men are Baha’is, and we figured we can combine practicing reading and text comprehension while studying texts discussing the Faith.

16h00-17h00: Organized delegate election. Not very easy when most voters can’t read or write. Which is why I and the two men of the previous class helped. A lot.

17h00-17h15: Drive back to PK-10.

17h15-18h00: Bit of free time, and supper (banana and chicken claw soup).

18h00-18h30: Commute back home (car) with Irène, other PK-10 girl with whom I spend most of my free time.

18h30-19h00: Run around the house like a headless chicken (again) as we all try to finish organizing out multi faith prayer meeting on Unity (today was World Religions’ Day – click here for more info)

19h00-20h30: World Religion Day prayer meeting. Participants: 10.

21h00-21h45: Drove Irène back to PK-10, and came back home.

21h45-22h30: Supper (but not me – that banana chicken-claw soup was filling, thank you …). Discussed a bit of the weekend’s events all together. Got a raspberry birthday pie. I think I mentioned ONCE that raspberry was one of my favourite fruits. But Jackie had remembered.

22h30-00h30: Laundry, shower, answered to an onslaught of (wonderful) birthday emails. Thanks guys. I love you too.

00h30: Bed.

Saturday Log

8h30: Wake up

8h30-11h00: Run around like a headless chicken planning Sunday’s prayer meeting, packing for the weekend.

11h00-11h30: Remembered to eat breakfast.

11h30-14h00: Finished preparing the prayer meeting and packing and preparing for the weekend.

14h00-14h30: Commuting to village (car).

14h30-15h00: Get attacked by 15 children all yelling happy birthday and throwing home-made confetti.

15h00-16h00: Younger children’s class. Students: 5. Topic: Helping others. Neat thing: the kids requested we write down class rules and hang it up in the carbet. Here are the rules they came up by themselves: 1) no hitting, 2) ask teacher permission to get up and go pee, 3) listen when someone else is talking, 4) no vulgar words or gestures.

16h00-17h30: Older children’s class. Students: 6. Topic: Zoroastrianism/Zoroaster. Had a fun geography game too (to give them an idea of where in the world all these different religions come from). Played a little bit of dreidel as we learned about Judaism last week.

A dreidel.

17h30-18h30: Had adults and youth sneakily come up to me and say things like, Oh, do you mind if we start the class a teensy bit later, and, Would you mind if the delegate election didn’t happen tonight (this coming from a guy who’s on the National Spiritual Assembly …) . Finally got steered into a house to watch the soap opera all women around here watch. This NEVER happens in the village usually. Not when I’m there, anyway. Something was definitely up.

18h30-19h30: Got kept in the house by a girl who claimed it was high time I get my hair styled. As she was doing whatever she was doing, I had a clear view of the carbet where the kids and youth were tying up christmas lights (I don’t think I was supposed to have that clear view). Halfway through a youth came into the house, looked at the girl doing my hair, and did an attempted subtle thumbs down. The girl piped up: You know what, that’s not a nice style. Let’s try something else! At the same time, I could see the kids and youth having a hard time with the lights.

19h30-23h30: Not-so-surprise birthday party. Forget JY class and delegate elections. Moved those two to Monday night.

Birthday specifics:

• A lady steered me into her house not long before we started the party and showed me the BASIN of noodles and chicken she and the other women cooked. I’ve never seen a basin full of noodles. It was impressive.

• The family where I’m staying has the most youth of the village, which is probably WHY I’m staying in that house. The father gave me a carving as a present. I’m really grateful, as I know they make their living off of them, and they don’t have much.

• Apparently I have potential to dance their traditional dance. The girls and ladies have been working on my moves for the past few weeks already. My hips are getting better at it. But my butt? How in the world do you wiggle it in four different directions all at the same time?!? I think the muscles needed were never developed in my case!

My dance teachers. (And on the left if my “hairstylist”.)

• This was interesting. The party started with the kids all clamoring over the drums and making lots of noise. None of the youth and adults participated. But about an hour later, the kids sort of naturally dwindled away, and the youth took over the drums and dancing. Then a little while later, the adults joined in. Apparently that’s the way it always goes. Had I been lucky the good drummers would have been there and played traditional music, but they had a gig that night! So we had a sound system blaring Caribbean and Saramacca music and drummed and danced to that instead.

Par-tay in the carbet.

The late partiers.

• After going to bed at midnight, I could hear the oldest youth playing our rap riff over and over and softly practicing his lyrics, until 1:30am. That was neat to hear. I felt it was a little hard to get these boys enthusiastic, but I think they’re just playing hard-to-impress, while deep down they actually like what we’re doing. (YOU try, as a not-so-hip young adult lady, getting 7 teenage guys enthused about stuff they like but you don’t know much of – like writing a rap.)

Da boyz of da hood.

Friday Log

7h00-8h30: Wake up, eat breakfast, prepare class, etc etc

8h30-9h00: Commute (bike) – today, it rained, and I DIDN’T forget my raincoat. Huzzah.

9h00-10h30: French class. Students: 5 ladies. Topic: the body.

10h30-11h00: Commute home (bike).

11h00-13h15: Mega weekend planning. Translated one page of reading for beginner readers – then developed exercises for 3 of those pages (for 3 different groups, all moving at a different pace). Planned children’s class, French class, junior youth/youth class.

13h15-14h00: Lunch: Pasta casserole (meat+melted cheese=yummmmmmmm…)

14h00-14h50: Finish planning for afternoon class.

14h50-15h00: Commute (bike).

15h00-16h30: Children’s class. Students: 9. Topic: Helping others. Insisted an adult stayed with me this time to help with discipline. Just their presence helps.

Discussed with the junior youth of that neighbourhood. They’re interested in a class. Am going to try to start a class on Fridays, 16h30, for an hour, next week.

16h30-16h40: Commute home (bike).

16h40-18h20: Prepared voting ballots for delegate election coming up; prepared stuff for tonight’s Feast; shower; ate quick sandwich.

18h20-19h00: Drove Philip to the Wagui Pasi (the village where he has classes) for Feast there; picked up Karim (ex-Montrealer now living in FG) for Feast in other location.

19h00-21h00: 19-Day Feast. 14 adults. Slew of kids. Awesome. Have pictures. Will upload when I have time. Most awesome thing: it was the first time this lady hosted a Feast in her home, and she went all out.
21h00-21h30: Drove people around.

21h30: Got home. Alone. (Bob & Jackie gone for the weekend.) AAAaahhhhhhhhhhhh, peace and quiet!

But, wait!

It’s World Religions Day on Sunday, and we have a small devotional meeting for it on Sunday night, and everyone is gone for the weekend (me included starting Saturday after lunch) – and everyone will be getting back home just a few hours before it starts. Soooooo …

 21h30-00h00: I finish planning my weekend classes, decorate the house for the devotional …

00h00-01h00: Call family back in Canada. (Not the same time zone.)

01h00: Bed.

Thursday Log

7h00-8h30: Wake up, eat breakfast, etc etc …

8h30-9h00: Commute (bike).

9h00-10h30: French class. Number of students: 5 wonderful ladies. Topic: the body. Made a game of bingo with the vocab. The ladies had a ball.

10h30-11h00: Commute home (bike).

11h00-12h00: Went to the post office to pick up parcel for Jackie who works during post office hours.

12h00-13h00: Prepared for the rest of the day.

13h00-13h30: Lunch. Menu: yummy chicken with rice, and salad, and fried plantain bananas.

13h30-14h15: Crazy car drive around a neighbourhood to meet kids Philip wanted me to, well, meet.

14h15h-14h35: Crazy fast bike ride with Philip back to the morning ladies’ house for a children’s class.

14h35-16h00: Children’s class. Students: 9. Topic: generosity.

16h00-16h30: Commute home (bike).  Get caught in the rain because both of us forgot our raincoats (seeing as we were running around like headless chickens).

16h30-18h00: Children’s class at home. Students: 3 (usually more, arg). Topic: same as above.

18h00-18h30: Supper (PB & J sandwiches). Both Philip and I realized both needed the car. Went into panick mode again as we tried to figure out who needs to go where when and how and who drives and picks up the other.

18h30-19h00: Drop off Philip at a village, commute back by car to the junior youth class I moved from early Wednesday afternoon.

19h00-21h15: Junior youth class. Students: 4, potentially 5. Topic: does happiness necessarily depend on material progress? These kids have a very low literacy level, so I may have to develop a new program with less reading (this was too much – 1h30 of straight reading, ack … it’s good for them, but they won’t stay interested for long) and more activities related to the topic.

21h15-20h35: Commute back to village to pick up Philip.

21h35-22h00: Didn’t realize Philip wasn’t done – participated in his class.

22h00-22h15: Commute back home.

22h15-23h30: Plan for next day and a bit for weekend. Didn’t get to do much.

23h30-00h00: Shower and all. Skipped writing log on Internet due to long day.

Long day. The car seems to bring us trouble more than help. We need to coordinate ourselves so that we’re not constantly driving others and picking up others. It eats away precious planning time (and as I may have mentioned before, most of my curriculum, I create myself, so I desperately need time to write, draw, photocopy, print, and translate things)! (And gas money in crazy high here.)

Wednesday Log

7h00-8h30: Wake-up, breakfast, email, all those shenanigans.

8h30-9h00: Commute (bike).

9h00-10h30: French lesson. Number of students: 13, all women except for one teenager boy who just moved in the country and can’t speak French yet.

10h30-11h30: Children’s class. Number of kids: 3. Not successful. This is the class with the superstitions and violence problems, and both types of problems arose today. Having too little kids makes it hard, as they try to get more attention, and it feels like there’s not much of a structure. Was not able to finish the lesson – had to put away everything as a punishment for hitting each other. DON’T like doing that.

11h30 – 13h00: Waited in the same house for the JY class at 13h00. Children were rather subtued when they realized I was indeed not going to pull out colouring sheets for them and I was holding the punishment to its full value. HATE, hate hate doing that. But at this point something needs to be done or nothing will change (about the violence, that is – superstitions isn’t something to be punished, obviously). Ate lunch: rice, chicken, and some bitter (but good) green veggie.

13h00: Planned with the junior youth class, which is fairly new, to change times to Thursday 7pm. 1pm is too close from when they come back from school (Wednesdays = half days).

13h10-13h30: Commute back home.

13h30-14h30: Unplanned break.

14h30-15h00: Commute (bike).

15h00-16h45: Favourite class: 5 youth and junior youth girls, most are sisters. One is a friend, and today she dragged along her 16 year old cousin, male. It was quite funny, as the girls are pretty boisterous, and he looked quite out of place. He also brought along a friend, which turned out to be the same aforementionned lone teenage boy in my French class. May have to start a class of their own so they feel more comfortable with friends their age and energy level. Topic: perseverance.

16h45-17h15: Commute home.

17h15-18h15: Squawking away on the violin. (click here for example of the sonority of a 63 Euro instrument – violin, bow AND case – and the result of going a month without touching a stringed instrument)

18h15-19h00: Supper. Menu: peanut-butter banana sandwich (I was home alone). Then shower.

19h00-20h00: Consultation about my children’s class and what steps I should take now that it seems to have a) dwindled to three students and b) have a lot of violence problems. No final decision reached yet, but a good honest discussion with the mother is in the works.

20h00-21h00: Aimlessly grasped at what the next children’s classes topic should be.

21h00-23h00: Discussion with Philip on what makes a good children’s class, discipline problems, good stories to present, how to make relevant coopertive games, and lots of tangeants.

23h00-23h30: Printing colouring sheets and preparing tomorrow’s classes and the likes.

23h30-00h00: Writing this thing, and hopping immediately to bed.

Tuesday Log

My week starts on Tuesday, and ends Sunday night. Mondays are off. So we start the logs on a fresh new Tuesday:

• 7h30 – 9h30: Wake-up, eat breakfast, read & write emails, read webcomics (ahem), prepare materials for the day. Today’s breakfast: nutella-covered toasts and an apa fruit (dark purple … thing … with four big seeds and white goop inside).

• 9h30 – 10h00: Drive to Wagui Pasi (I have just started to drive on my own this week – it’s nice intsead of depending on others for rides); stopped for gas, and realized that 1), I didn’t know which side of the car had the gas hatch, and 2), what kind of gas the little car takes – sans plomb or gazoline? (Answer: 1 – on the passenger side, and 2 – sans plomb)

• 10h00 – 11h30: French lesson with a few ladies of Wagui Pasi. Today’s lesson: level assessment (this was their first lesson). Two beginners, two who have a small but useful vocabulary and are slowly learning to read and write, and one who can talk fairly well and read fairly well too. Worked on reading vowels and talking on the phone.

• 11h30 – 12h00: Drive back home.

• 12h00 – 13h00: Free time.

• 13h00: Lunch. Today’s menu: shark, fried plantain bananas, mashed potatoes, and a salad.

• 13h30: Prep for next two children’s classes in the afternoon (this includes printing colouring sheets and the likes).

• 14h00: Off with Philip (his turn to drive) to Acarouany (village of 75 houses).

• 14h30: Arrive at village, assess situation: there’s a huge carbet that has been built a few months ago specifically for these classes. Two men, after seeing our arrival, lug a big table up the hill and under the carbet.

• 15h00 – 18h00: Village captain’s son comes and sorts out all of the kids himself, and stays throughout the two classes (total of three hours) in case there’s a need for discipline.

First class, 8 years old to 10 years old. 13 kids. Second class, 6 years old to 7 years old. 14 kids. Today’s lesson: how to pray (bottom line – be respectful of others when you do so and ignore the ones that try to bother you).

Highlights of the lesson: having no less than 7 adults willing to help out (which just doesn’t happen in any the other classes of the week).

• 18h00 – 18h30: Chatted with the captain’s son and a few other men who want to see lots of good things happen (like get their own kindergarten as it takes the kids 2 hours by bus to get to the closest school).

• 18h30 – 19h00: Drive home.

• 19h00 – 20h00: Supper and free time. Walk in to the house to the smell of … PANCAKES! (this is a first). With Wakefield dark maple syrup (brought down South by yours truly).

• 20h00 – 22h30: Plan 4 classes for the next day (1 French lesson, 1 children’s class, 2 junior youth classes). This includes creating an original Word Search for a youth group, printing colouring sheets, creating extra artistic materials to go with lessons. More details on that tomorrow.

• 22h30: Shower.

• 23h00: This internet thing.

• 23h30: Bed. (Or I hope it will be within the next 6 minutes.)

Strange/noteworthy happenings of the day:

• Dead disemboweled armadillo hanging at the entrance of the Acarouany village. Apparently they’re quite tasty. I wouldn’t know. Yet.

• Philip’s amusing performance of the story he was sharing during the lessons.

• Pancakes!

Logs

I realize now that I haven’t really explained what I do in French Guiana. Not really. So, now that I’ve set myself in a steady routine (finally), I decided to make daily logs for a week.

This is something I would have liked to read before going to do a year of service myself, so I hope others like me may find this useful – and I hope friends and family can understand as to why sometimes I’m not so communicative!

Gentleness

“Conquer a man who never gives by gifts; subdue an untruthful man by truthfulness; vanquish an angry man by gentleness; and overcome an evil man by goodness.” — Mahabharata, of the Hindu Writings

You know, you can look at a counsel like the one above and think, Oh yeah, I understand what that means. But what you don’t realize is that all you understand is the theory. You haven’t yet tried to apply the theory into action.

I have previously, in this blog, voiced my concern for an excess of violence in the children’s surrounding culture, boys and girls alike. Some weeks, there will be almost nothing to worry about. Other weeks, there will be such violent outbursts within one of the children’s group that it strikes you dumb.

This week had such a case. In this class one class, there were only three children in their own house this time, so the class structure was a little loose. Everything seemed to be going fine. In this particular group, somehow, this one kid keeps being picked on. Everyone seems to know he reacts to anything you do to him, and this gives him the image of a mean kid. And because of that “mean kid” image, the others feel it is OK to pick on him. (This is a reoccurring pattern in most of my children’s classes, but that’s a whole other topic of its own.) The kid really just needs to control his emotions, but try teaching that logically to a six year old who still barely knows you. Not easy.

So it has come to plain and simple intervention from my part. Verbal intervention, and if necessary, physical intervention. This, with the best effort not to vilify, insult, ridicule, or hurt anyone. There have been some particularly violent outbursts where I did not feel comfortable to intervene yet: I was afraid the kids would see it as a threat, or that I’d get someone or myself hurt even more in the process.

Yesterday though the boy came on to his older sister with such a vengeance that it seemed he would never stop – not only that, but I had seen what the sister had done to provoke him, and even though she didn’t deserve the beating, it was plain that the boy was just fed up. So I did something I never thought would work: I wrapped my arms around him like a hug (while avoiding the flailing arms and legs) and gently repeated “stop, stop, I know she hurt you, please stop” – and incredibly enough, the next moment, he was hanging limp in my arms, with the saddest face of defeat. I couldn’t believe it.

Some wouldn’t have though twice: they would have marched right up to the boy and beaten him, then sent him in a corner (or something along those lines). But by doing that, the boy only learns that violence is the answer to everything: control, power … the stronger one wins. The opposite can be true, though: “…vanquish an angry man by gentleness…” Hopefully they’re going to start understanding that power and abuse, whether physical or mental, isn’t the answer to everything. And when they understand that, the culture of violence will change. The most “powerful” ones become the most respected ones – the ones respected for their kindness, trustworthiness, gentleness …

But the children need to understand this before they start applying it in their daily lives. And other than by constant example, from my part and from their parents and teachers (whom I know beat the children everyday at school), I don’t know how to make them see it.

Baby steps.

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On a side-note: today, a violin arrived in the mail; I had one of the best children’s class ever; and we had French toast, with Wakefield dark maple syrup to boot.

Happy!