Hey everybody,
Wow...crazy weekend. Plenty of rain here, sometimes hard and sometimes a fine rain that would just mist everything although there wasn't a rain cloud in the sky.
I'm kinda disappointed with myself at the moment...I missed a meeting, a big meeting for me. The group I'm attached to met on Saturday and they only meet 1/month. However, I was so busy ping-ponging around that I forgot about it entirely. There were many things I wanted to cover, but looks like I'll have to get it done another way. Sadly, I saw some of the group members on Sunday and nobody mentioned my absence or tried to call/remind me during the meeting when I had not shown up.
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I am almost done with the computers at our library...just a few tweaks and bugs to work out. One of my midnight oil side projects in the library has been setting an ebook library. Since I don't think people want to dig through files and folders to find the desired ebook, I'm coding a bunch of HTML pages so all a user would have to do is open firefox and follow the links to narrow what type of ebook they would like to view. Kinda wondering if this will be in vain. It's hard enough to get somebody to pick up a physical book, much less read one on the computer screen. However, this seems to be the best, fastest way to get new material for personal and student use.
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Saturday, I had the wonderful help from a man named Pess. He lives and breathes steel pan and traveled up to our village to help tune our old pan (the ones the kids were cleaning in previously posted blog pictures). They are really starting to sound nice and he even donated a brand new pair of bass drum sticks to our cause, avg. retail EC$65. Sure we don't have enough drums to make a full set for each type, but we have enough to gather attention and hopefully drive motivation both in the village and externally for support. We still need to find the proper rubber to craft the pan sticks, which I discovered surgical tubing is a great material. We also need to set a regular meeting time for some instruction--not easy at the moment, but work in progress. Our steel pan efforts will bear fruit eventually.
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Sunday I attended my first Vincy funeral, which just so happened to be here in Spring. People from all over crowded outside of the church where a service was held. I remained at an outside window or conversed with others outside...would have taken photos, but I had forgotten to recharge my remaining batter. >.< The funeral procession went the entire length of the village from one end where the church was to the far other end at the cemetery. It was a slow march with drums, steel pan, singing and dancing. People here remain festive to celebrate a person's live during the funeral.
The cemetery is a steep hill and I was one of the casket bearers helping carry the coffin and remains up to the top...perhaps 150' up 60 degree hill. It took 8 men to do the job and I have a nice bruise forming on my left hand from the weight and pull. After the body was lowered to the ground, everybody stays while the hole is fully covered and then flowers and candles are placed at the mound. I used a back hoe to help pull dirt down and fill the hole. Some people remained to dance and sing in a closely knit circle around the grave.
Afterward, we came back down to the house of the affected family and had a small party. Many people thanked me to for helping with the funeral and I heard many people talking about how I am always around to get involved with things in the community. It's a good thing and they are saying I will be a 'Spring Man' in no time.
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Scott, another volunteer, got to be my first overnight guest. He came up from his village Saturday afternoon so we could work together on a Peace Corps effort and so he could experience some aspects of what I do here. He arrived just in time for the pan tuning, got to go the banana processing Sunday morning, enjoy some community food, and lime a bit at a party.
Yes, we did also get some work done. He and I will be leading a section of our next Peace Corps training update mid-February--we call it In-Service Training (IST). Our topic will be Resource Mobilization. At first, we really were not sure what that was, but apparently our APCD (boss) Mr. Cool seems to think that he and I have been very good at figuring out where to go, who to meet, and what to do in order to 'get the ball rolling'.
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Tutoring is going along nicely. I started giving homework to them, which should be due this week. Let's see how many actually even tried to finish it. I just got donated a large (3'x2') white board and markers that will come in very handy. Originally, the idea behind the tutoring was to simply expand on what they are already doing in their classes....homework, further explanations, etc. All of they known they should bring something they need help with, however nearly everybody shows up just looking to learn something. Many don't even bring a pencil or paper which is driving me batty, but I'm dealing with it.
I don't want to do set lesson plans because of the diverse grade levels and learning needs represented in the groups. If we don't have specific things to work on, I've been improvising a few game/activities for them to do that haven't gone too bad. The kids seem to like them, but I need to develop new material because a few are already growing bored of the other stuff. I'm trying to negotiate time to get the librarian and the kindergarten assistant to help out, at least with the literacy...should work out well.
Literacy is a challenge. Many of the kids can't do phonetics, sounding the words out, and that takes up lots of individual attention. So while I'm seeking help for that, I'm trying to get the 'up-to-par' learners motivating into reading. It is a cultural fact here that most Vincentians simply don't read unless they have to...one reason why there are hardly any bookstores here (textbooks not included). I tried to get the kids to read some short stories written by a local Caribbean author that were tailored to their age group (8-10), but they fiercely rejected my attempts. It would seem that anything beyond what I might think to be a 1st grade book is completely ignored by them.
I am considering trying something out of the box...comics. Perhaps kids would react nicely to the pictures small patch word grouping. It could also get them involved with the facet of story-telling (depending on the comic) and I might be able to involve some reading comprehension/retention skills. I'm hoping it could become a gateway into regular books. Not that I'm trying to say that comics are in anyway inferior to a short story or novel--simply a different form of art. Now the tricky part will be trying to find out how to get comics in their hands...
I am also thinking of making my own Scrabble-like board game. I'd love to buy a few, but they are really expensive (EC$120) for us to simply purchase and I'm not sure when I could get around to trying to raise some funds otherwise. However, we have an actual wood shop business here in the village and I think I could get them to cut me a few boards and a bunch of 'word tiles' from plywood. Ghetto? Sure it, but it will do the trick and help with the spelling and their creative focus. Yeah, I don't really see students here pushed into their own creative thinking/learning/questioning. Just learn what listed and spit it back out kind of learning.
Anyways, plenty to do...work to be done. I still have my first community organizations meeting to be held tomorrow night to work on, tutoring to prep, and a list of other things for today--wish me luck.
Stay safe and well.
ciao tutti
~your local wannabe jedi
~Shawn
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