The Night

As promised...pictures of my last night with the Doekoe girls. They presented their play for Denissa, Dulcie, the Walkers, and me. Nervous as they were they did a fantastic job! They each received certificates for a virtue they demonstrated during the study of the book.
From left to right: Marie, Adea, Estella, and Florence.


They had brought some DVDs of Saramaka dancing and made a brave attempt at teaching me some moves. When they realized I was hopeless, they decided perhaps cards were a safer bet, followed by a few rounds of dominos while I got my hair braided.








This groups stands out here because they are willing...willing to learn, willing to change. They are joyful, they're thankful, and this just makes them radiate! I hope that those of you reading this and looking at the picture of the girls can see those qualities. Girls like these give me hope for the future.

"Among the young ones in the community are those known as junior youth, who fall between the ages of say, 12 and 15. They represent a special group with special needs as they are somewhat in between childhood and youth when many changes are occurring within them. Creative attention must be devoted to involving them in programmes of activity that will engage their interests, mold their capacities for teaching and service, and involve them in social interaction with older youth." (from the Universal House of Justice )

Final Project

A sad part of having to leave is the junior youth groups coming to an end. I will especially miss my Monday night group with the girls. They have made such incredible progress in their reading and writing and in their contributions to discussions. As their final project, we worked to create a paper "quilt" with each piece of the quilt containing a part of the story in the book we were studying (Breezes of Confirmation) that demonstrated virtues.
Each girl wrote a part of the story and indentified the virtue demonstrated.




Then all the pieces were tied together with string and the girls were very proud of their work. The quilt now hangs proudly in the living room of their house.




Tonight they will present a play they created based on a part of the story and will receive certificates for virtues they themselves demonstrated during the study of the book. Following this will be "girl time" during which I am apparently getting my hair braided. (Pictures to follow)

A strange afternoon

As a reward for completing the book "Breezes of Confirmation" (the first in a series of books for junior youth that focus on service and developing capabilities), I promised of my tuesday night group that we would have an outing. They were very happy for this since they are on school holidays and dying of boredom at home. However when I went to pick them up, one of the girls had been given her baby cousin to look after and the other girl in the group didn't want to come if her friend wasn't coming. Since this was the only afternoon I could take off to do the outing, I was forced to drive off with only the four boys in the group.

I was feeling quite skeptical as to how this afternoon would go... Three hours with 4 pre-teen boys. Well, surprisingly enough, it was quite fun. We began our afternoon of "no girls allowed" at the dock. The dove into the water and judging by how happy they were, I have a strong feeling this was one of the first times they had left their neighborhood all vacation. Of course, it wouldn't have been a complete outing without an injury and Rodrigue provided the opportunity for me to practice my first aid skills in a country with one of the highest AIDS rates in the world when he cut himself climbing back onto the dock - I couldn't do anything...I have nevet felt so helpless in my life. This is something we have been warned about over and over again, but it took a few seconds for me to stop myself from going to clean up the cut. I had to tell him to wash it off himself and put a band-aid on himself...I just sat there and watched, knowing what a risk I would take simply from the desire to help him, a young child; feeling angry at the world and the people in it who could possibly be responsible for inflicting an early death on this wonderful intelligent boy.

It's moments like those that make the reality of AIDS come slamming into your face like a truck on a highway...and it hurts almost as much too. If you think I'm being paranoid or over-dramatic...I'm not...the level of sexuality and infidelity here is frightening (forgive the lack of statistics...officially the rate is low because so few of the cases are reported or known...hence the continuation of the spread...however, French Guiana has the highest percentage of people living with HIV in all the French departments).

We walked back to the house so that I could properly clean up Rodrigue's foot and put a good band-aid on. Then they went back outside to play some more on the beach, with Rodrigue relunctantly sitting down next to me since he couldn't go abck in the water. He passed the time by telling me about soccer and his latest accomplishments at school. I was very happy to listen and I think he enjoyed having someone to tell them to.

When the three other boys were tired out from back flips and races, we sat on the grass and played cards, broke open some coconuts, then ventured over to old abandoned ship and explored it. After a race back to the house, which I of course pathetically lost, despite having the longest legs, they relunctantly got back in the car, and each took turns changing gears...all the way home!

In posting the little afternoon episode, I'm not making negative implications about the people here. On the contrary, they are wonderful, welcoming, and very lively. It was more to draw attention to something real and dangerous, but preventable. Something that is affecting a lot of innocent children, many of whom I have been teaching all year. The stigma that surrounds people who are HIV positive is disgusting, because none of us have a right to judge another, and none of us can ever know what those people have gone through in their lives, and what they are going through but especially...discriminating against people and ignoring a problem does nothing to solve it, plain and simply. So here's an expression of hope that people can stop focusing on the consequences; crying over the statistics; feeling sorry for others...and maybe start addressing...and I mean really ADDRESSING...some of the causes.

Mental lapse

Saturday we decided to go visit a friend's village on an island in the Maroni. The trip requires driving to another town, which is mainly used a military base, and then taking a pirogue to the island. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't had my cup of coffee yet that morning, but my brain just was not functioning properly and as I stepped out of the car and slammed the locked door shut, I left the keys in the ignition.


So there we were, half an hour from St.Laurent, with all our money, food, and water locked in a pretty red Twingo.


We managed to get one of the windows down a bit, but were quite lost as to what to do next. Luckily, there was a group of soldiers nearby who came to our rescue. They acted swiftly and sent one of the guys off to the "utilities building" to bring back a long sturdy cable. They formed a hook, passed it through the window, and gently pulled the keys out.


(I would just like to go on record of saying that we totally could have done it one our own had we had access to the "utilities building" or had a spare piece of cable lying around)

Our heroes of the day.

Unfortunately, our friend with the pirogue never showed up, and we spent some of the time waiting in the only restaurant in the town (if you can even call it that), watching a very cool sloth trying to get from one satellite dish to another, and being total tourists.









and in the end, I got my cup of coffee.



(Note: This is of course in no way a representation of habitual activities on one's year of service, but simply a funny story I wanted to share)

St.Laurent du Maroni

The streets...






























The dock...my favourite place...great for thinking, working, drawing, swimming...and sneaking onto unattended boats.





















Place de la Liberté...where you can find happy families playing during the day and...um, happy couples at night








The Town Hall...where lots of important stuff supposedly goes on...











Our mailbox! It's always nice to get packages ;-) hint hint...actually no I'm leaving soon, don't send anything!

The countdown begins...

One month left! Trust me, this is not said with excitement (more like a long droned out whine followed by a sniff and a tear). I'm not going to pretend, if you had asked me about 4 months ago I would have been jumping to leave. This year has been everything but easy. However, if there is one thing I learned this year, it has been to live in the moment, to appreciate where you are, when you're there, and getting everything out of it...Regrets are useless. So here I am, one month from leaving the place that has been my home for the past 7 months. Things are busier than ever as I desperately try to finish all the study circles and junior youth books before leaving. As my wise mother said last night, it's okay to spend the beginning without being too busy, but if the end isn't busy, you leave feeling like it was a waste of time, so I fully intend on working until the last second I'm here...so enough of what's going on in my head...what's going on in French Guiana???
This weekend was our first one spent in Wagi Pasi in over a month and half and I have to admit...I missed the hammock. What I didn't miss however are the gigantic spiders!!! They will definitly be an integral part of my memories of St.Laurent, though not a good one. Just before climbing into my hammock on saturday night we noticed a large black thing moving across the net of the hammock...we spent the next half an hour running after it trying to kill it.

Luckily Oginio came to our rescue, but we still failed and it disappeared into the night...creepy legs and all...to go find some other unfortunate victim.






The next morning we washed in the creek as usual. The thing that really struck us was how much kids help out their parents without even being asked. The fact that on the weekends it's perfectly normal that you go with your mother to the creek to wash clothes and dishes goes so contrary to North American society where it feels increasingly like kids constantly have to be reminded to help and even get rewarded for it. There are many things we have learned from being here and I think when we go home we'll be a lot happier about helping out with house work...espcially since none of us will have to walk half an hour just to do the dishes.
We then lazed around the "carbet" where we had slept and had some breakfast before heading off for classes.




And I got spend time with my baby Jackie, who I absolutely love and adore and want to take home with me.
She has such a strong character and she walks around the camp as if she owns it. She controls all the little boys in the camp and even her older brothers are a little scared of her. Oh yes, she's two and half.

This week will be extremely strange because of school holidays and classes being moved around, but I hope to be able to post more pics in the days to come. For now though people, stay away from spiders.

Highlight of the month

So, today I had my highlight of the month, and possibly even of the year...there is of course no surprise that it is Sunday and good things always seem to happen on Sunday!
My morning was part one. In my fantastic french class one of the women read her first word on her own. We had been working with syllables (Ba, Bo, Mi, Di...may seem incredibly simple to all of you reading this but imagine you have never seen the letter B before in your life...who was it that decided that a stick with two half circles on it would make the sound we'd need to to say bumblebee?) I realized we had learned all the syllables to be able to read the french word for Saturday so I wrote it on the board and asked one of the women to read it. Very slowly, with no help, she pieced together the syllables and yelled with joy when she realized she had just read a word.
Part two came in the afternoon class. It was our first day trying a split class with literate and illiterate people. It was a plan meant to help everyone advance at their own pace but I was a little worried about the "social repurcussions" of it. The first part went very well, working with the literate men. I thought it was the class I would enjoy the most but I had much more fun in the second class; they were much more lively since everything is done orally and it sometimes feels like they're just making a much greater effort.
At the end of the second class, one of the men, Robby, called me over and said he had been trying to write with a pen now instead of a pencil but that it was really hard. So I looked at how he was holding his pen (a bit smooshed and akwardly), and placed it in a bit of a better place, and he wrote perfectly! He let out a long "Womii" (literaly translates as "man", used here as an exclamation) and called everyone over to show his pretty handwriting, saying "Look look, it was that easy, just holding the pen...". Incredulity is the word that comes to mind.
My usual Sunday night study circle was unfortunately cancelled due to absence of our hostess but I had already picked up two of the girls so we got hamburgers (French Guiana style) and went down to the river and got a chance to know each other. It was so nice to hear these young girls talk about their dreams and objectives. All I could do was tlel them how impressed I was with their purposefulness and pray that their hopes become reality.

Lesson Learned:
Life is full of choices. The right ones are usually the hardest to make but also the ones that feel better in the long run...yes, yes, I know, it's been said, but hey, we all have to learn our lessons!