A Vincentian Funeral

Last Monday, a fourth grade student at the Layou Government School passed away. On Tuesday morning, I arrived at school to hear the sad news of the day. Zendi Thomas, eight years old, had fallen on Sunday evening and had hit his head. He was living with his grandmother and she did not realize that the fall had caused serious damage. On Monday, they went to Kingstown to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital but it was too late. The damage caused initially by the fall was too great and he passed away after visiting hours on Monday evening.

Tuesday morning began with the regular student assembly where the teachers shared the news with the students of their classmate. It was heartbreaking to see the children crying and in shock over their loss. They prayed, sang songs and there were speeches about life and its’ brevity. I am still in my observation period with the school so I was asked to take one of the sixth grade students who was having an especially hard time into my room. Yikes! Grief would be a big challenge without navigating the cultural differences and dialect. I did what first came to mind which was to ask him if he wanted to draw a picture or write a letter to his friend. He said “yes” so I pulled out a piece of paper, colored pencils and a pen. After twenty minutes it looked like he was finishing up so I asked him if he would like to share his letter with me. What followed was the most endearing moment. He read about how much he missed his friend and all of the happy memories they had together; playing football, swimming in Layou and singing their favorite songs. He explained the pictures that he had drawn and how he made Zendi the “#1 football player” since that’s how he would have wanted it. After going through the letter, Ashroy seemed to be doing better so he returned to his classroom. On Tuesday, I learned that the empathy we can have for each other as delicate human beings trumps the cultural divide.

The funeral for Zendi was on Sunday afternoon and boy, what a celebration it was! The service began at 2:30 at the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The building was packed to the gills with family, students from the school and community members. There was singing, bible reading and speeches given to celebrate the life of Zendi. The grandmother sang “Tears in Heaven” as a tribute. There was crying and wailing; it was the sound of broken hearts asking God for help, understanding and peace. After the service, everyone walked up with the casket to the graveyard. The Layou cemetery is at least a mile away from the church up the main road. It was absolutely amazing to see this mass of people walking and singing, celebrating life. It looked like a homecoming parade in a small US town. At the cemetery there was a feel of a festival complete with the sound of trumpets, the laughter of children and the selling of refreshments. I arrived home around 5:45, exhausted and refreshed by my first funeral service in St. Vincent.

Full Speed

Around 2:30pm, I heard screams and laughter coming from the play yard that is connected to the Layou School. I had been working on a visual aid for the first grade teacher and was nearly complete. I could not take it a moment longer and I decided that the poster could wait; I had to check out the yard where the noise was coming from. What I saw next can only be described as unbridled joy.

The fifth graders had their PE/exercise period. They were divided into 2 teams, one side with 23 girls and the other with 2 girls and 21 boys. The teams were lined up, facing each other on opposite sides of a blacktop about the length of a basketball court. They were running relay races. The runner would start by running straight to the other side, behind the other team’s line and then back across the court diagonally to the next person on their team in line. The race created a criss-cross pattern across the blacktop where the runners of opposite teams would nearly run into each other during the final leg of the lap. The children flew! Most of them had taken off their school shoes so they could run faster. I love that the girls were against a team of boys. I cannot help but think of how often, in my experience, the boys are split between teams to make it more “fair.” In Layou, for the afternoon, there were no doubts that the girls could keep pace with the boys. As each child took off, you could see fierce determination in their eyes. There was great camaraderie among the teams and the excitement was palpable. No wonder they love this subject—now only to figure out a way to make reading this exciting!

This has been one of my favorite moments since I arrived. It is great to see children running at full speed, barefoot and so full of life. It makes me curious to know if kids in other parts of the world are the same or if they are ever even given the chance to run with all of their hearts.

Fish Eyes, Ironing and Vincy Aerobics

One morning this past week, I woke up went through my normal routine of getting ready and headed out to breakfast at the Adam’s table. Sitting on the table in front of me was a bowl of fish soup, complete with a whole fish, potatoes, green bananas and broth. Fish eyes stared back at me as if to say “Good Morning! I hope you are ready for another day at school!” Now, I would not consider myself a picky eater but I am not especially keen on bones, skin or eyes for that matter. I guess that I have gotten used to the fish industry in the US that has convinced me that fish is skinless, boneless and eyeless when it comes to your table (or the skin is just on one side and easy to remove). It was one of those small challenges you don’t expect to come across but there it is facing you down at 7am. After taking a deep breath and a big sip of coffee, I went to work on the soup. I scraped every piece of meat off of that fish that I could wrestle free from the bones, skin and eyes. I saved all of my scraps on a separate plate and was relieved to find that a cat happened to be hanging around our yard. My scrapes went straight to the cat and my lack of fish cleaning skills went unnoticed for the day.

Vincentians must be among the best pressed people in the world. On the van to Kingstown in the morning, everyone has on a clean, fresh outfit. Even if it is just a t-shirt, it looks nice. During my first week at the Adam’s house, I had put on clothes to go to training and Florence simply told me that I was not allowed to leave the house without pressing my clothes first. I tried to convince her otherwise by stretching the shirt and showing how once I tied it up, it would look better but there was no chance. I was to join in the ranks with the Vincentians and become clean pressed. Since that day, I have decided that Sundays are my ironing day. After church, I pick out the five outfits that I will wear for the week and then get to work on ironing. It is hot work in the midday heat with only a fan blowing a bit of relief. It usually takes an hour for me to complete the chore and I am always sweat drenched by the end but it feels good to know that Florence is proud of me when I walk out of the house in the morning. Her Peace Corps is no creasy!

This past week, I was invited to attend aerobics with Florence’s sister, Edna. After a day at the Layou Government School, I hoped on a van to town to meet her at her office. Aerobics are held at the Peace Memorial Hall in a room that serves as a reception area for the concerts and recitals hosted in the auditorium. The class had four participants; myself, Edna, the former principal of Layou Government School who is now retired and a woman who appeared to be in her late sixties. The instructor, a man in his fifties, had been in a terrible car accident that left one of his legs permanently damaged. I had been nervous that the class might be too hard but after assessing the situation, I felt like it might be more like low-impact aerobics which would be much easier to follow. Boy howdy, I was wrong! The first twenty minutes of class were spent Shaking- Your-Booty. My bum went in every direction possible at the fastest pace possible for the next twenty minutes. All of those women were naturals! They could spin, shake, thrust and move those hips in all different directions. After the first twenty minutes, we grabbed “weights” that had been created by putting sand into Gatorade bottles, and did twenty minutes of non-stop lifting. “Squat deeper, lift higher, don’t stop!” yelled the instructor. I could feel the burn. We finished up the class with twenty minutes of sit-ups and Pilates style stretching. The next day, I could feel it all and it made me smile. Just goes to show that assumptions are usually wrong. I can’t wait to go this week. I figure after two years of this class my hips will be able to move like a local Vincentian!

Picture of the Beautiful Layou Waterfront

“Layou is a good place to be. Good, good, good, good!” - Mrs. Florence Adams

There always seems to be a sign from the universe when I have landed myself in the right place. I sat in the Peace Corps office in Kingstown, St. Vincent, anxiously waiting for my host family to arrive. A woman stepped into the office, “Sarah!” she hollered. I jumped up, “It’s me!” I said and grabbed my stuff. As soon as I was within arm’s reach, Mrs. Florence Adams, my new host mother, gave me a hearty, sincere hug. Having come from a hugging family, it was just about the best welcome to St.Vincent that I could have hoped for! The universe was letting me know I had landed myself exactly where I needed to be for the next two years.
During training, I will be living with the Adams family. Florence, my host mother, is a dynamic, talkative Vincentian. She owns a lotto shop in Layou and has graciously allowed me to spend many hours hanging around the shop getting to know the lay of the land and starting the rumor that there is a new “whitey” in town. Richard, my host father, is gentle, kind and quiet. He works at Y De Lima, a variety store, in Kingstown. He has the greatest grin when I tell him that I might be knocking on his door after I move out because I will not be able to figure out how to cook breadfruit or make anything tasty out of green figs (green bananas). Justlyn, my host sister, stays with the Adams during the school year so she can attend secondary school in Kingstown. She is everything you would hope for in a 15 year old girl. She is so bright and has an opinion about everything. She loves fashion and wants to be a lawyer/psychologist, though as she explains it there is not much demand here for psychology because Vincentians have not caught on to its usefulness. Like my real sister Jenny, Justlyn is wise beyond her years.
My host family is most direct link I have to my new community. Living with a host family is an important part of the Peace Corps experience because they want us to integrate into our community so that we can work at a grassroots level, learning from the locals and working in harmony with them to create the change that they wish to see for their community. Miss Florence always introduces me as her “Peace Corps” and has shown me around to the morning bathers at the beach (retirees), shop keepers, Methodist church and pretty much every person we meet while walking down the road. They have also taught me how to wash all of my clothes by hand, iron properly and make awesome banana pie, where you use green bananas to create a casserole that can be best described as a cross between baked macaroni, squash and mashed potatoes! They have also helped me pick up on the dialect but I still feel like I am in a foreign land most of the time. It just goes to show how many different twists and turns a language can take.
Here are a few pictures to capture my first week in Layou:

1. Justlyn, Florence and I outside of the Methodist Church in Kingstown where we attended an Induction Service for the new minister in our circuit.

2. Sunday dinner! Amazing! Clockwise from the top: Chicken, Tomato, Cucumber, Carrot/ Cabbage Salad, Steam Vegetables, Kidney Beans, Steamed Sweet Potato (they are white inside but taste similar to the variety most common in the US) and Plantain, Pumpkin and in the middle Banana Pie!