Doing my bit for Operation Restoration
|
Åsa Martén
Tuesday, July 03, 2001
|
 |
| 'Mr Troublemaker' Kemar Edwards and me made quite a team. |
Asa Marten, a Swedish exchange student tells how she threw caution to the wind to help remedial students in the heart of Trench Town.
Curiosity about the place I'd only heard Bob Marley sing about brought me on a visit to the poorest and most violent ghettos in Kingston. The reputation of Trench Town is built up on stories like "Every white person who enters the area is shot down" or "You see starving and dead children on the street". Not trusting these rumours and hoping the stories must be made up because of prejudice, I went off to Trench Town.
My friend Kristina, a Swedish volunteer, who works at the learning centre, met me and accompanied me from Downtown. We took a cab from south parade to "up a yard" and left Downtown behind us. After turning off the main, we entered the so-called "bad areas" of Jamaica.
Our driver was a 50-year-old man who was born and raised in Jones Town outside Trench Town, where he had spent his life, running taxi to Downtown, as a profession.
"It used to be nice here, peaceful and pretty, but you know, mi a get old an mi tiad a hear gunshot an see dead body." His way of saying that actually made me astonished. It's hard to really believe that a place on earth could be so full of crime and terror yet people living there actually get used to it and start to talk about it as an everyday phenomenon. I compare it to the way all of us get used to what we hear and see on the TV news about war and tragedy. The big difference is just that it's happening right in their reality, and if they are not totally 'destructed' by bad experiences, they must certainly live in fear.
We drove through the ghetto, and even if roads and houses were in terrible condition, it looked surprisingly pretty and cosy in the morning sunlight. The driver dropped us at the gate; we paid him $10, and walked straight into one of the rows of students, lined up for devotion. As Fallon saw us, she smiled and waved. I'd met this sweet light brown-eyed girl in church the weekend before, and she looked joyfully surprised to see me again.
The atmosphere at the school was strict and disciplined. When the students raced a song too much, they had to start singing from the beginning again. To know the Lord's prayer, the National Anthem and the National Pledge were naturally a requirement. Later on, after discovering the students' knowledge of English, I wondered if they really understood what they earlier had promised to do for their country!
The Project
The project Operation Restoration was founded in 1994 by Lorna Stanley, Principal of the Restoration Christian School. The remedial school started in 1996 and the students attending are boys and girls of ages between 10 and 17. Some are dropouts, while some never used to go to school. There are even 15-year-old boys and girls starting at the centre to learn the alphabet for the first time in their lives. This centre gives the students a chance to catch up, attempt nine grade exams and apply for High Schools or continue with different training programmes. There are no limits for how long a student can attend the school.
Kristina was supposed to co–operate with other teachers to help and strengthen the teaching, but the school is short of teachers so she was put in charge of an entire class. The students in the class were between 13 and 17 and looked curiously at me. Stanley gave the students a serious preaching about behaviour. Then she introduced one 14-year-old boy as 'Mr Troublemaker', explaining to me that I would soon understand why.
Today, Kristina had English Language on the timetable, and I was her assistant. The first task was for the students to write a note off the board, which was not a very simple and quickly performed mission. I had to check all of their notebooks, to see if they wrote the sentence correctly. Some did, and some did not. Kristina kept telling her students about the importance of repetition. This was the third time they were going through verb tenses and most of them were still not sure. As in any class, some students distinguished with brightness, while some of them did not understand the meaning of a verb. Off course, I spent most of the time with students having the most problems, and it would sometimes seem hopeless if a student still didn't understand after my best attempts to explain. None of them are dumb – absolutely not – but they are far, far behind. Something I could see in most of them was their desire to learn and their stubborn attempts to try. On a few occasions, 'Mr Troublemaker' had difficulty concentrating but overall, he behaved rather disciplined. There were even times when he was able to answer questions that nobody else could.
In the lunch break, we took a walk with Phillip, an acquaintance of Kristina, running a small workshop where he created tiny little handcarts and other Jamaican souvenirs. He was around 35 years-old and raised in the heart of Trench Town. We passed two youths standing up in a street corner, doing nothing but showing off their brand new Nike gold watches and chains. We didn't even speculate on where money for those originated from, or if it perhaps could have been spent less extravagantly. Phillip was talking while we walked and he said something about his community which I think is very true: "Trench Town is nice to live, man, but sometimes people get very angry, and then them do things that's not good..." The expression on his face showed some kind of hope and faith that people one day will be able to leave their desperate operations. Maybe it is in the dark night, when people need to appease their hunger and despair, that the unpleasant stories begin. We started to walk back to school, passed the same two 'Nike-boys' – just as proud of their gold as before.
I stayed only for the introduction of the next session: 'How to do a personal presentation', because it was time for me to return to my home in St Thomas and my own school for afternoon classes. I said bye-bye to the students, Kristina and the staff, who wholeheartedly invited me to come back. Then I sank down and took a breather in the backseat of the cab. As soon as my exams are over, I hope I can return to the school to give some more help. My experience at Restoration Christian School was short, nice and informative. Coming back to Downtown bus parade from a different part of Kingston, for the first time, Downtown looked modern, pretty and clean.
Last week Asa ended her year, as a participant in the AFS Intercultural programme. She returns to Sweden this Friday.
|
|
| Related Articles |
| No
related articles were found |
| |
|
|
|
