Today is the first day of the 2014-2015 school year. Like she does every year, Rihanata, the maternelle’s headmistress, has “forbidden” me to walk around the classes today.
The thing is that the first few days of class for the maternelle children, particularly the smallest ones in the three-year-old class (P3), is a “tragic” day here, just like in the rest of the world. If we add the fright of seeing a white woman – which most of them have never seen in their lives – to the tragedy of separation from their mothers in an unknown place surrounded by other children who do nothing but cry, the poor things are inconsolable!!
When you hear the children’s disconsolate wailing the first few days, your heart goes out to them and you want to try to console them. But I know from past experience that I have the opposite effect on them. I’m comforted by the knowledge that the teachers have everything perfectly under control. You can’t imagine the foolproof method they have of getting the children to stop crying by playing drums and clapping and singing.
The sound of crying notwithstanding, this is a happy day in the maternelle, as the silence of these vacation months has been happily disturbed by the reentry of its 300 children.
Just the opposite is the case with the girls from the “educating unschooled girls” project. They wait this day excitedly. This 2014-2015 school year marks the beginning for the third class of twenty new girls. The girls, along with Larissa (a girl from the first year’s program who has to stay with us for a few more years due to her personal situation), will spend a year here in the FAR receiving instruction in basic schoolwork, nutrition and first aid, in order to prepare them for either possible enrollment in school or vocational training in a workshop next year. Further, we have enrolled the 39 girls from the first two classes in school. A total of 60 girls already this year in the project that steals our heart every day with their smiles and their joy.
The 96 boys in the Street Kids program are another story. They are boys after all!! I find that of all the FAR’s projects, this is without a doubt the one that implies the biggest daily challenge because of the complexity of the situations that the boys we take in come from. The seventh class of these boys has begun, with 15 new boys who – as in the girls’ project – spend their first year with us at the FAR. Further, we have enrolled 54 boys from the last 6 classes in school and placed 27 more in training in workshops such as mechanics, welding, carpentry, etc. We keep daily track of their attendance and their health and hygiene, etc.
With so much activity today, it’s likely I’ll get home with somewhat of a headache, but bubbling with happiness and satisfaction.
Happy “rentrée” to all!!