My fabulous Sunday

You know when you have those days that are just amazing: you feel so happy, a kind of natural high; you feel joy to be alive, purpose in life...well, Sunday was one those days.
It's a surprisingly empty day, considering I leave the house at 9:30 and don't get home till 6. I only have two French classes but they are my favourite classes.
The first one is in the middle of nowhere just off the national highway. (apologies here for the lack of pictures). It's a class of women, children, teens, men (literate and illiterate) and babies. The youngest student in the class is 11 and the oldest is 60. At first I thought it would be impossible to teach because of the range of ability but not so...the most beautiful characteristic of this class is that they all help each other and this creates an atmosphere of joy, which is of course conducive to learning (possibly why they are my fastest moving class too). The literate men help translate, the teens help the children, the women help each other and compliment each other on their latest writing homework.
The day had already started out beautifully when Dee and I went to pick up some of the younger students and were greeted with big bouquets of flowers.This sunday's lesson was on the calendar. I wrote the names of the months on the board and one by one, we went over them and then they had to write them in their books. Bear in mind, this is a class of 14 people, only two of whom already knew how to write when we began. Everyone was working so silently and were so concentrated, calling me over "Miquela! Miquela! It's good? It's good?". Every single one of the students did the work perfectly, and they were so happy afterwards. For the women, these were the first twelve words they had ever written.
After the class, we had a prayer meeting. It was our first one, but according to them, not our last one. There was such an atmosphere of respect and calm, even when one of the children was saying a prayer. When we ended with a song, the women requested to be taught how to say a prayer in Saramaka next time, which one of the men accepted to teach, and the rest of the class wanted to learn a prayer in French by heart.
There is a Baha'i prayer that begins "Oh God! Refresh and gladden my spirit...". Well, now I know what that is supposed to feel like.
I went home for an hour's break and then drove out with the girls to the next class. We all get dropped at different camps on a long road while Dee continues on to another town called Mana, and then on her way back she picks us all up. I was dropped in the village of Dubois with Vic, who had accepted to teach the children's class for the day in the place of a youth who couldn't come. While she taught the class, I sat in the "carbet" (carving hut, where the men make their sculptures). I arrive at 2:30 but can't begin the class until 4, so in the meantime I work with different groups of people on reading and writing. Some of the men are completely literate in Dutch and some of the students can't read or write in any language, so different groups work on different things. However that day I had the most fun with a group of three women, who have been coming very irregularly. Who would think one could have so much fun with the alphabet? We couldn't stop laughing and by the end it felt like there was a level of trust or a certain connection between us. It's difficult when you can't communicate with someone to really understand what they're doing in your village, to see if intentions are really sincere...but perhaps this one on one time helped them see that I really was there to help..not to make fun or glorify myself. In any case, their participation in the class was fantastic that day. Just a few minutes before starting the class, Dee drove up saying that the road was blocked. SO I had two assistants in the class for the day which was great because I was using a worksheet to learn vowels, and it's very difficult to keep track of how 18 people are working. When they were done, the women called me over to check their work and just for fun, I put some star stickers on their papers and told them they were stars. They got all giggly and started comparing each other's stars. This made one of the male students, Moni, very unhappy and he asked for a sticker too. I laughed and said it was only for the women and went off to help someone else. I only had my back turned for a few seconds when he got up to ask Dee for a sticker...very sneaky. So I agreed to give him one but then five other men piped up and said that wasn't fair and that they wanted one too! I said I didn't have enough for everyone and apologized to Moni that it wouldn't be fair if he got one and the other men didn't. This led to a playful argument in which Moni blamed the other men for the fact that he wasn't going to get a sticker and sitting down in a huff. By this time everyone was laughing and I had to promise to bring enough stickers for everyone next time.
This is, as I mentioned in the last blog, the time of the Fast and teaching can be very challenging when you can't drink, but that day, I barely noticed it. However when I got in the car and all the excitement had died down, I realized how exhausted I was and fell fast asleep...but I had a big smile on my face.
What a fantastic day!