Service visits, Mauritian girls, and all kinds of heartbreak

I was going to nap because that would be the wise thing to do right now. However, wisdom and time management are enemies. Two things that need to be done right now include sleeping (both to catch up on yesterday’s loss and to prepare for tonight’s madness) and writing in/editing photos for this blog. I can’t do both at the same time, and I can’t do one without thinking about the other. DAMN YOU, LIMITED HUMAN ABILITY!

I returned from my second service visit about an hour or so ago. We visited Terre de Paix, an education and culture center/community for Mauritian children who have been abused, abandoned, or otherwise neglected. We got there sometime before 13:00, right as the children were finishing up with lunch. Only about thirteen SAS people went on this trip. I hadn’t signed up for it, but last night, after dragging myself up onto deck 5 en route to Kovila’s room, I took a quick look in the Give Away box and saw a ticket for this.

I’m glad I went. Like yesterday’s, today’s experience made me feel so close to people. There are so many things we in the West polish our lives with. On top of the necessities we take for granted, we layer on want after want until they’ve become so normalized that we call them needs. I need to buy an ipod. I have to get some new jeans. I really need a new hair cut. It’s to the point where we actually feel naked or handicapped without having some of them met, but the cushy, pretty coating on our ball of perceived needs is just layer after layer of hungry, superficial, ADD nonsense. I don’t yet have the words for how I feel when confronted with those whose basic human needs, such as food and clean water, or even paper, are what’s at the surface; what obviously needs to be met.

The nature and structure of the educational experience at Terre de Paix is something that kept me smiling. All around the classroom were the children’s antiviolence art, photographs of victims of violent and negligent acts, and feminist themed drawings and paintings.

I was able to sit in on a music class that was being held upstairs. There were four students and a man. The two girls were learning how to play the keyboard and each of the boys were seen with a guitar and a drum at different points throughout the class. When we walked in, he was teaching them a jazz song the name of which I can’t recall. Upon their teacher’s instruction, the four of them played a beautiful, chill version of Fur Elise. I smile stretched across my face. I was so inspired and at that moment felt very happy.

After that, one of the students tried to teach a couple of us how to play a certain kind of drum, the name of which, again, I cannot remember. He had outstanding rhythm, and laughed at us when we tried to mimic him. I’d never seen a drum like that before. The teacher said it was probably of Arabian origin. It was just a large, wooden circle with goat skin stretched across it. It looked like a gigantic tambourine without its tiny symbols.

When we returned downstairs, Cress was teaching some kids “You Are My Sunshine.” After that, they taught it to us in Creole French.

Our percussion teacher returned to the guitar with us downstairs and played us a few songs. I have decided there is a direct link between his singing and my happiness. One of his friends played another song and then another guy rapped while others kept a beat.

Unrelated: I just put on a song Bill let me listen to once and it zapped me back to his truck in Jacksonville. Bah, I miss him, and that time. I’m going to ask Kovila tonight if there’s any place around where she’ll be taking us where I can use my phone card before he plum forgets me. I reckon she’ll know.

If I may, I also miss exchanging words with my beloved Egon/Edvard/Aiakos/Matic/Dr.Doom. I think about him [if not Jesse] every time a drink coffee, which, if we’re counting by cup, can be around 4-12 times a day. Oh dear, if he reads that, he may feel awkward, or sexy.

I’ve also found myself missing Jason, though I knew him for only a couple of days. I had his cd in my bag for a few days after South Africa. I found myself pulling it out to glance at the image on the cover (though the one on the back is my favourite).

Writing the name Jason made me think of Janson. Hi dollface. :)

Okay no more shoutouts. Back to kids.

Yesterday, my visit was to an SOS children’s village. Incredible place with incredible people. AH!!!

It’s a little community in which children who, similar to those at Terre de Paix, were abused, neglected, orphaned, or abandoned, go to school. They also live there in these “families.” Each family has about seven or eight kids of varying ages and is head by a “mother.” These mothers are absolutely amazing individuals. Go ahead and kill yourself now, because you’ll never live up to what these women have done with their lives. They are all women of extraordinary backgrounds who for, for reasons ranging from their own compassion to what they described as God’s will, leave their lives—their families and occupations—to live in the SOS village and be mother to children as if they were their own. And to see the way these women care for the kids…amazing. They are strong, compassionate, insightful individuals who have somehow found the ability within themselves to devote every hour of their lives to taking on the [joyous] burden of being matriarch in a family of children who have all been traumatized.

And the kids! Good lord are these children beautiful. A tiny little guy whose name I couldn’t get out of him stole my heart. He must’ve been around 2 or 3. The oldest one I met was 16. He fancied me some bit it seemed and kept taking our picture with my camera. He also said “goodbye” about three times more than necessary. I came armed with gender-neutral, non-militarized toys and learning aides: notebooks, flashcards, stickers, pencils, crayons, and slates & chalk. I gave the stickers and drawing materials to the kids and the flashcards and books to one of the women working there. One of the girls asked for my hair tie, so I gave it to her.

I didn’t want to leave at all. My heart melted away and regrew many times until I was simply so overwhelmed that I had to walk away from the crowd of playful sticker-covered children towards my beloved professor, Toni. She was speaking with one of the mothers, who, upon introducing herself to me, gave me two kisses. Aww. Awwww. She’s an incredible woman who had worked for women’s causes for 23 years before becoming a mother. Toni introduced me to her as this insightful feminist activist and I started to blush. For that, the woman congratulated me. We all exchanged addresses. I can’t wait to write her. I wish I could have spent at least a week there, getting to know about the lives of these women and the children they raise. Oh, to be a rich documentary filmmaker.

Oh! Joe, the videographer with whom I enjoy exchanging cynical banter lately, told me on the bus ride to SOS that he’s met and shaken the hand of James Nachtwey! What the hell! Good lord, is that incredible. I was telling him about the “huge black photojournalism book I look at when I’m becoming to selfish and materialistic” and just as I was recreating the dimensions of the book with my hand, he got goose bumps and told me about how he’s met the man. Ahh!

So cool!

Oh…speaking of photographs, I have some advice for Semester At Sea, since I know they read this: Please, please briefly ask you students to take a moment to at least speak to the people—children, mothers, beggars, workers—especially on these service visits, before they turn on their cameras and start shooting away. Please? It’s embarrassing to be part of a group that’s acting like we’re at the zoo. Within ONE minute of entering the SOS village, cameras were flashing in children’s faces. I find it disrespectful. The point of these visits isn’t to come back with images of pretty orphaned children in dirty clothes.

Anyway, these service visits have made feel...a lot of things. I’m so very, very fortunate to have been able to cross paths with these individuals. This is what Semester At Sea was like in my dreams back in May when I first applied.