Life goes on

What a wonderful day! We have begun our activities in a new area and I am so delighted!
We had the morning off to prepare for all the activities and totalled up all the hours we will be working a week: 35; not including irregular activities, travel time, or prep. This is excellent because our goal was to be working 40 hours a week including all those things! So we reached our goal!
At 2:30 we left the house for the village of PK10. It is an entirely Baha'i village but has had some trouble in keeping up activities, but the people have a wonderful spirit and were very welcoming! We met all the adults of the village in the main hut to introduce ourselves and explain what we would be doing (all this in French with translation into Saramaka, one of the languages spoken here). Following this we held a deepening in the same hut on the subject of the Covenant. This Covenant is between God and us, His creatures. The Baha'i teachings on this subject say that God created us out of His love for us and therefore He has promised that He will never leave us alone. In order for us to understand His will, He sends us Manifestations who give us Holy Writings and teachings and allow us to know God, though we can never fully understand Him. Among these Manifestations are Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and Baha'u'llah, the Manifestation of God for the Baha'i Faith. Our side of the Covenant is that we must recognize His Manifestations and follow their teachings. It is an uplifting topic of discussion and also very comforting to think of God's love surrounding us and guiding us.
At 4:00, we broke apart. Denissa took the young children to their class and I had the privilege of teaching a French class to 7 beautiful women. In the West, we really take our education for granted, but being allowed to work with these women will make anyone appreciate their opportunity to go to school so much more. These woman are all mothers, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and are completely illiterate, and yet they have more enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge than anyone I have ever met. These French classes are meant to be for conversation only, as they are meant to help the women obtain "Carte de Sejour" here (this is a French Dominion, and in order to obtain a 10-year legal stay card you must speak French). But these women are so enthusiastic and eager that they have learned to write their name (for some it is the only thing they can write) and we will slowly be learning how to read together. They are so cute, they could not stop giggling! It was great fun!
At 5:30, Denissa switched to a Junior Youth class (ages 11-14) and I went a little further down the road to the village of Boussiman to teach a children's class.
I truly was spoiled in this class. The children are adorable and so well-behaved! I know I sound surprised but it is extremely difficult to discuss spirituality with young children if they have not learned how to sit still, so my job is made 20 times easier when they do..hence, I was spoiled! I had 16 children ranging from age 3 to 12 and the highlight of the evening was memorizing the quotation! Every lesson has a quotation from the Baha'i writings that goes with the theme of the lesson. As this one was on unity, the quotation is:
"So powerful is the light of unity that it can illumine the whole earth".
It is a lot easier to memorize these with young ones if you add actions to each word and it works even better if they come up with the actions. So for the word "unity", they chose to all hold hands! But there wasn't enough room in the hut so we went out into the middle of the village and started yelling this quotation at the top our lungs for everyone to hear and then halfway through we all held hands...it was beautiful to see!
The greatest challenge (with all my children's classes) has been to get the children to call me by my name! It is impossible! No matter how many times I remind them, and Denissa says she has the same problem, they will always call us "teacher" or "miss"...finally I managed to get them to call me "Miss Miquela". I guess that's as good as it will get!


We said our goodbyes and I headed back to PK10 where we ended the evening with a prayer meeting in the main hut. Because most of the village is illiterate it was mostly the children who said prayers, which is really wonderful, since often children are not given enough encouragement or opportunity to participate in things, be they religious or secular. It's astonishing how near-sighted people can be and not realize that the little ones whose imaginations and joy we crush with our fatigue from work and our own lack of enthusiasm are the leaders of tomorrow! They must be nurtured!


At 8:30 the entire village broke into song and the drums came out! This kind of spirit is being lost in the city and so it was uplifting to see it still well and alive in this beautiful village. We quietly excused ourselves since we did not want the singing to end but we also did not want to be on a dark road too late at night!
As we walked out to the car, we looked up at the sky and were greeted by the most amazing night sky I have ever seen in my entire life! We were so far away from the city that we could see every star clearly and the moon shone so brightly we didn't notice it was in fact the only thing providing us with light! A beautiful end to such a beautiful day!

Lesson Learned:
Never take anything for granted, that includes people. Express gratitude as often as possible; you never know when the time will come that you will no longer have what you thought you always would. Gratitude for things and people makes detachment from them a little easier.