Confirmations 101

Some people believe in luck. Others believe in coincidence. Karma. Or even the power of positive thoughts.

Prayers take the cake.

Here’s why.

Friday morning, St-Laurent, French Guiana, 7am: Sarah and I take the little boat across the border to Surinam. All goes well. We hop in a taxi to Paramaribo, leaving at 9am for a 2 hour drive.

Friday morning, Paramaribo, Surinam, 11am: The driver doesn’t recognize the street address we give him and I don’t know how to drive around this city. At all. I just know how the guest house looks like, and have a general feel for where it is. Quick prayer and plea for help. We take a random-ish left turn on my random directions. Hey, that’s the street we’re looking for and HEY! That’s the house too!

Saturday morning, Paramaribo, Surinam, 3:15am: 3am bus shuttle to the airport isn’t showing up. Instead of panicking, a quick prayer and plea for help – hey look, the bus is pulling up!

Saturday morning, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 7:20am: WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY 8AM CONNECTING FLIGHT IS CLOSED?!? But I just arrived via Caribbean Airlines from Paramaribo, I had no other choice but to arrive at this time!! (quick internal prayer and major plea for help) Check-in lady finally lets me check in, rushes me through the legal stuff while I chuck luggage in (please don’t lose it this time, please don’t lose it this time …).

… “Closed” flight ended up being delayed instead, giving me 45 extra minutes to go through security and reaching the waiting room in a comfortable time frame.

Saturday afternoon, NYC, JFK airport, 4pm: After waiting over New York City for a storm to pass, I land quite a few hours later. (Had I still kept that connection continuing to Ottawa, I would have missed it – it was leaving at 3:30pm from the OTHER airport in NYC, LaGuardia …) Sarah was on another flight to the same destination as me (the flight was full by the time she bought her own tickets) – and we had no tangible way to inform each other of when and where our delayed and possibly misplaced flights ended up (no, I don’t have a cell phone). Quick prayer for help before landing. Exiting the baggage pick-up, who’s standing right there waiting for me? Sarah.

And all our luggage made it safely too.

Now. I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t do your best effort to be ready and to do things yourself – on the contrary, I’m a strong believer at being absolutely ready and organized to the best of your abilities. But when things are no longer in control, asking God for inspiration, or a nudge in the right direction, isn’t a bad idea.  … Of course that last one, with Sarah finding me, was no easy task for her. Apparently no one in the airport was helpful, there was a lot of wandering outside the airport involved … but there was one baggage claim clerk that helped her confirm where and when my flight landed, though he let her know it wasn’t his job to do this. Who knows. The confirmation from that prayer perhaps inspired that gentleman to help out anyway, allowing Sarah to find me … (there are more details involved in this one, including wrong flight numbers, landing in Philadelphia, and other such things …)

Last prayer and confirmation I have to share:

July 2007, Israël, Haïfa, the Shrine of Baha’u'llah: Prayer: I’m not sure helping out an English teacher in a private school in Brazil is the right place for me as a Year of Service, though they’ve confirmed it was all good and I was expected t arrive in mid-January. I pray intensively in the Shrine at the threshold of Baha’u'llah’s tomb that my capacities be used at their maximum, wherever that may be.

July 19th, 2007, Ottawa, Canada – less than 24 hours after arriving from my pilgrimage to Haïfa: I receive an email from the private school in Brazil saying they can’t house me, and that I should apply another year, or apply somewhere else for my Year of Service. I glance rather quickly at the list of places that asked for help. Though I’d previously seen the article on French Guiana and had though “Ack! No way! I don’t want to go live in villages, I know I can’t do it!”, this time I though “Well, I speak French, and there’s a lack of French-speaking people to help around the international Baha’i community as I’ve learned while in Haïfa …” An hour and a couple of emails later, the Canadian pioneer committee received the new list of countries I’d picked as destinations, immediately contacted Jackie in French Guiana (yep, this committee’s all about effective action, let me tell you that …!), and she contacted me back asap with thorough info concerning the country and the status of the community there. (Still in that same hour.)

No other country replied.

I went to French Guiana.

When praying, I had in the back of my mind that my capacities were mainly music – forgetting that speaking French was a capacity, and teaching how to practice a language like you practice music, being patient (to a certain degree), and other such things that I can do but didn’t realize could be useful … discovering abilities and capacities that I didn’t knew I had also happened …

Man, were my capacities stretched to the limit.

But again – my prayers had been answered.

Ramble ramble ramble.

Yet again – T-minus 7 hours and counting (that is, for the pirogue-bus trip – then plane trip the next day).

This past week has been very, very productive, as far as typing, creating, fixing, visiting, and packing goes. If it’s worth discussing, I’ll have to decide later – the computer’s now going in its bag.

Here’s to hoping the luggage doesn’t get lost again.

Youth Day

A long, long time ago (“in a galaxy far, far away” or “I can still remember” – take your pick), perhaps in January, Philip had an inspired idea. We should have a Youth Conference.

One of our main tasks here was to find literate youth to take over the work we’re doing. Yet we didn’t seem to be able to see it happening anytime soon. So he began to think: when has he, as a youth, felt particularly inspired to go out into the world and help out? During Youth Conferences. Meeting new people, seeing opportunities to help, seeing HOW one can help … it was a great idea, and would have been simple enough to pull off in North America.

Not here apparently.

But he still held on to the idea that we should do such an activity. And held on and on … and eventually, despite the gazilion cultural/time/human resources constraints, we had a Youth “Thing-Picnic-Event” on Sunday. To our delight, we were a total of 27 youths on a small island in the middle of the Maroni river.

At 6:30am, we left Wagi-Pasi (the village where we stay the weekends) with a carload of a few more youths, and dumped them at a meeting point where a boatman was to ferry us to the island in two or three loads. After picking up a few people (including a bleary-eyed Sarah), we were finally all reunited on the island around 7:45am, ensuring us a spot (it’s summer vacation – and it’s a popular island to go swimming and picnicking).

The island and its beach

Armed with drums, food, and swimsuits, we began the day with a few prayers and split up into a few groups to study a few things. That was, by far, the one thing that worried me the most. These kids have just finished their exams – who wants to study more?!? But they did good. Many were way too shy to talk in front of the group, but we managed even the shyest to say a few words throughout the day.

One of the pavilions where we had the workshops

A group had come from Cayenne, the capital, and they were heading the main workshops. A few side workshops were a drumming session and a First-Aid workshop (done by Sarah – and me helping her translate a few things). Sarah and I must be some of the most nervous people I know. We both panic right before a presentation or before teaching a class – but when we actually teach, we really get into it. Go figure. It was great to get to do that together.

Sarah and Oginio

There was some soccer playing on the beach, some good food, some major swimming, and in all, everyone left the island in the evening with a grin.

“The ball’s in the water – AGAIN!”

How many youths can you fit on one pirogue?

The evening was wrapped up with a supper at the Doekoe girls’ house, where there was some serious Saramacca-American jamming going on (explained in the previous post). I’m still thrilled that Sarah brought her small bagpipes. The kids were quite confused by the concept. (“You blow in a bag, and then what? Huh? You have to squeeze it for the sound?”)

And it’s with this activity that four or five youths have expressed interest in helping out around.

Without this activity, I doubt they would have stepped up.

And without Philip pushing for a Youth Conference, I doubt we would have done this activity (despite it not being a Conference in the end).

So – kudos and thank you, Philip.

Seven Months and Monkey Meat

I look at the amount of times I have posted in December and January, then in May, and notice I have more than a 50% decrease of activity on my posting. But life down here is not less exciting than before. So, to counteract the possible impression of banality in French Guiana, let me tell you why things are still exciting.

First: I only have three weeks and a half left with all of my classes. This is especially pertinent with my French classes, as my main side project here was developing a French-Second-Language curriculum for illiterate students. This, I have been working on all year long, and I have just finally figured out how to grade my students and with which criteria. (Now to figure out how to evaluate them fairly within the next three weeks.) (Remember: I’m trained in music – not pedagogy.)

Second: I’ve managed to arrange carving lessons for my girl’s group (the one I keep raving about). We’re starting tomorrow. And yes, I did finish my chess board. It’s going to be heavy in my luggage. Darn.

Third: Speaking of board games. Monopoly with improvised cards, such as “teach your right-hand neighbour how to play your instrument for 10 minutes”, “show Sarah how to fold a paper crane”, “Yell Marco: the fastest person to reply Polo gets 5000$”, “Make lemonade for everyone” … well, you get the idea. Philip, Sarah and I amused ourselves yesterday evening. I also got spontaneously challenged to a game of “Quarto”, which a man promptly taught me how to play (sort of a mix of chess, tic-tac-toe, and bingo, all in one). I may need to make myself a board of that too.

Fourth: My schedule has had an upheaval during the weekends, and I no longer stay in the village of PK-10 overnight (though I haven’t cut any of the classes I do there). I now reside in a new area to work on a couple of specific projects. This family’s … well … here: What do you say when you see the 14-year old girl walk out with flour hand prints all over her face, saying “It was Amoni!” (her uncle), then her uncle walking out, half-covered in flour, saying, “It was Sébastienne!” (his niece), and then seeing a hoard of little kids covered in flour tromping out of the uncle’s house? … Fun times lookin’ up. (This is also the man who juggles babies while standing on a slack rope. I kid you not.)

Fifth: Seeing a wild boar getting hunted during a class in a remote village, then seeing it getting decapitated, de-haired, and prepared for cooking, alongside a couple of baboons … reminds me how sometimes I’m not exactly home. (Details of this adventure have been stacked in the “to-draw-as-cartoon” list, which I haven’t been working on recently.) (No worries. The baboon and wild boar one shall not be graphic.)

Sixth: … I forgot to celebrate the 7-month mark! It’s been 7 months! Yikes!

Seventh: Without going into any details, let’s just say that I’ve also had to rethink how I understand the Baha’i Faith, or more like how I fit into it. This isn’t something that’s entertaining for you to read about, like the baboon meat (no, I didn’t eat any, if you were wondering) or flour-fights, but it’s by far what’s been weighing most in my mind and heart. I guess that’s everyone’s struggle and search, in a way: where they fit in the world. (Ok, so some people don’t struggle with it at all, but you know what I mean.)

So that, in a rather large nutshell, is what’s been going on these days.

As my classes wrap up, and final projects get accomplished, I’m pretty sure I’ll have a substantial amount of fun stuff to post up here during these last two months. Well, hopefully, anyway. I feel like if I don’t leave with a bang on my year of service, that somewhere I’ve done something wrong.

So expect an upsurge of pictures and videos and whatnot.

100 Days and LSAs

I have a funny little gadget on my Facebook page that’s a day countdown. I added it in December just for laughs – it is now counting down how many days there are left before I go home. Apparently I’ve just hit the 100-day mark.

I realize I was supposed to post on Monday, but Monday became a crazy administrative day. I mean, crazy.

I shall back up and explain.

In the Baha’i Faith, there is no clergy. Administrative affairs are taken care by a body of 9 members elected in each community (ex., Montréal has a group of nine elected administrators, Ottawa has one too, etc.). This group is called the Local Spiritual Assembly, and it changes every year.

When we do the elections, we can’t do campaigns. What happens is that people vote for the 9 members they personally believe would be of the most help on the Assembly that year. This means it’s your job to go out and meet as many people in the community in general so as to have a good idea on whom to elect. Again. No campaigning. Everyone 21 years old and over is eligible. (So if you want this to feel a little closer to home, let me say that I’m eligible to be elected, and that a friend of mine of my age has just been elected on the Laval Spiritual Assembly.)

Every country then has a National Spiritual Assembly, which is elected by delegates from each region of the country. And then there’s the members of the Universal House of Justice, that are elected every 5 years, and who take care of the affairs of the Faith worldwide.

What does all of this have to do with my Monday being crazy?

There are a lot of little Baha’i communities in French Guiana around the town where I’m staying. These communities, most of them, don’t have access to mail easily, can’t come to town easily, and many are illiterate. So come election day (April 21st), they need help.

Now. Usually some people from our town go around to give them a hand for the day. But these wonderful people are getting ready to leave the country to Haifa for the election of the Universal House of Justice as I type, and so they were a little overwhelmed with travel preparation on Monday.

So it’s Philip and I that took the rickety old little car, a bunch of pencils, papers, ballots, money for food, and went around the Maroni region for about 10 hours assisting 10 different Local Spiritual Assembly elections (and in most cases, breaking ties) (we even needed tie-breaking sessions for some tie-breaking sessions a few times).

In all, a busy Monday. And I’ve been trying to catch up with my week’s class preparation ever since.

Wait wait what now? How long has it been?

In a few days I’ll have reached half of the time I’m spending in French Guiana.

…

What HAVE I accomplished?!? What WAS I supposed to accomplish?

Ok, so I keep jotting down the amount of lessons I have, the amount of students, and such statistical numbers … but sometimes it’s just so easy to fall into the routine and forget why you’re really there.

I forgot.

So I’m attempting a checklist:

• teaching French as a second language to illiterate women. *check*
• creating a new set of French lessons aimed directly to the local population’s need, and ORGANIZE it so others can use it successfully. *oops. need to start organizing my lessons a little more effectively*
• 35 radio programs *hm. looking for some voice actors who can read and act a bit*
• children’s classes *check*
• junior youth groups, encouraging the arts *check, successful at least with one group*
• jam with local musicians *not yet ….!*
• help out in the Baha’i community’s activities *check*
• finding new local youth who’d be willing to help out once we’re gone *…maaaaybe one?*

Ok. Now I need to make sure I don’t leave the country with any regrets. Starting with the easiest:

1. organizing the French lessons’ curriculum and evaluation system (gah – any teachers out there who would have a sheet of basic second language competencies? Mom? Dad?).
2. Jam with local musicians: some recent contacts may make this possible – if anything, making up songs with Irène counts, I believe. We improvise on the spot. That’s considered jamming, right?
3. Radio shorts: maybe I should be the one to initiate a discussion of the possible actors with others who are involved, as everyone’s as busy as everyone else.
4. Finding new youth: set up a meeting with that one girl’s parents to see how they can all participate.

Ok.

I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.

But at least I’m doing something.

When Things Unexpectedly Line Up

All week I’ve been getting myself ready to go to Cayenne, the French Guyanese capital, for a tutor refresher course that we were to direct. We were to be 7 going there, 4 in one car and 3 in the other. The seven of us all played an important part of the workshop. We were so pumped at doing a 3h road trip, it wasn’t even funny. We had to cancel all of our weekend classes, prepare presentations, pack a few drums … it was going to be great.
And a day before leaving, the little car wouldn’t start.

Uh-oh.

We tried everything, except getting our trusty mechanic to look at it (as he was in Suriname for the weekend).

So, we canceled the workshop.

Backing up slightly in time here: about three days before that, I’d looked at the class and art material boxes, which were all over the place and completely unsorted (that will happen when you have 2 to 4 kids like us come for a few months, bringing their own materials and leaving it behind without having much time to organize). Anyway, I’d asked if it were possible for me to take a couple of days off in the near future to make an inventory and to re-organize everything, so we know what’s available, and what we need to go and get.

Back to the canceled workshop.

This meant I had two days where I’d already canceled my classes.

So I just spent a weekend cleaning, categorizing, trying out over a couple of hundreds of markers (to test for dried-out ones), re-sorting coloured paper, etc etc. I tell you, no simple task, but I had a blast nonetheless.

I even had a nice free late afternoon on Sunday where I shamelessly pulled out the violin for almost three hours.

And the workshop has been postponed to March – no harm done.

Oh yeah – have I mentioned that, when Bob and Jackie went to tow the car back to the house, it just happened to work fine again?

Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be …!

Three Months

Well, January was nuts.

Animals seen:

• pet monkeys
• pet parrots
• more dogs
• more cats
• A CUTE ORANGE KITTEN (which I proceeded to pet successfully, to my great satisfaction)
• a very hairy baby hog (picture to come … someday … need to steal it from Philip)
• wild iguana
• a whole slew of newts (it’s especially funny when they try to steal your food – very persistent little buggers)
• a venomous snake
• a tarantula (click here for picture) (did this so that people who DON’T like spiders don’t have to look at it) (it was cute and fuzzy) (and got stomped on about ten seconds after the picture was taken, the poor thing)

Events attended:

• New Years at Paramaribo
• A  not-so-surprise birthday party
• 19-day Feast
• Unit Convention (where my girls sang their song – yay!)
• An afternoon at the park with the girls that sang their song as a treat (mmmm, and we had coconut ice cream …)
• Carnival (today was the burning on a stake of “Vaval”, the Carnival’s mascot, as it’s Ash Wednesday …)

Movies watched (you’d better believe it – we watched a MOVIE this month! … Two, actually!):

• Shrek 3, immediately followed by Shrek

(oh yeah. we’re so classy.)
Ongoing classes:

• Children’s classes (6-8 yrs old): 7 (one is being transfered to Philip in a week or two)
• Children’s classes (8-10 yrs old): 4
• Junior Youth groups: 2 (previously 3 – one was dropped last weekend in favour of a study circle)
• Study Circles: 1 (Ruhi book 1)
• Adult French classes: 6
• Total ongoing classes/events: 20 (huh. I thought I did some paring down of my classes, but apparently I filled up those free slots again … ah well, things are running much more smoothly now)

Traditional/cultural things learned:

• A couple of Saramacca songs
• A few dance moves (these desperately need work)
• A few designs that strangely resemble Celtic patterns (!)
• A few social differences concerning the roles of men and women

Personal things accomplished:

• A one-page comic (as I don’t seem to be modest about this claim, I think you all know about this by now)
• Almost done reading through book 1 of The Wheel of Time
• Setting up a music studio (!) (THANKS MOM, DAD, & JACKIE)(mom&dad: special midi cable and extra violin music; Jackie: midi keyboard and student violin)
• Getting two composition commissions: one in Reno (!) and one back home in Ottawa.
•  … and surviving the month despite the dratted little black clouds that were hanging over my head.

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.