Fois et Joie

Imagine you have a staff of bilingual Quechua-Spanish speakers* and you have a Cameroonian ??? Jesuit who speaks French-English visiting to learn about the work your staff does. How do you get facilitate a conversation between them?

If your answer was to use your Spanish-English American volunteer, congratulations! You were correct!

On the morning of the 45^th anniversary of the killing of James and Lilly Potter,** I headed to the PERFAL offices after a 2 hour nap (remember from Friday's post that I got home around 5am). Pd. Eddy had asked me to translate for a native French speaking Jesuit who also spoke English. I thought it seemed like a strange request since Pd. Eddy spent two years studying in France and I had seen him speak French fluently last year. Had he suffered some sort of inverse Jason Bourne injury where he remembered who he was but forgot all his training?

No, Eddy was just busy. He had a meeting in Cusco. So I accompanied the visiting Jesuit on his trip to see one of the FyA schools in the PERFAL network.

Fr. Saturnine, SJ is originally from Cameroon, but is working in Chad and will soon take over as the general director of Fe y Alegría in Chad (or "Fois et Joie" in the native French). He had come to Andahuaylillas to get a first hand look at the rural education and the support that FyA gives to the 22 schools in the PERFAL network.

We drove up to the school in the community of Ccoñamuro, which has 106 students and 5 teachers. The students are divided into 5 classrooms (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th/6^th). In 1^st and 2^nd grade the students, who speak Quechua at home, learn to read and write in Quechua and study Spanish as a second language. Instruction is done in both languages from 3^rd grade on. Since the school is an hour away from Andahuaylillas, the 5 teachers, spend the weekends with their families (in Urcos or Cusco) and live at the school during the week. All the parents are assigned to cook lunch on a rotation. Usually a mother comes and cooks, but the cook the day of our visit was a man. It was explained that he is a widower as of 2 years ago but he makes sure to come support his children.

The school's connection to FyA is difficult to explain. Unlike FyA 44 in Andahuaylillas, this school was not founded as a FyA school. Ccoñamuro was an existing public school when FyA offered it support through PERFAL. The connection with PERFAL means instructional support and training for the staff, funding that built the teachers' house, and the funding the build the student bathrooms. Last year, they also received a set of laptops from Telefónica (remember them from last year's FIELD DAY). FyA 44 has a partnership with the Telefónica foundation that provides technology for use in the classroom. It was quite the juxtaposition to see students in traditional clothing working on modern laptops. Tradition and modernity don't have to be enemies.

Fr. Saturnine shows second grade students his home on a globe.

Fr. Saturnine was quite impressed by everything, from the quality and size of the facilities to the pedagogical work. After visiting each classroom we met with the director of the school (who doubles as the 1^st grade teacher) and Fr. Saturnine asked some questions. Then we returned to Urcos so he could grab his bag. From there we drove to Cusco. But before dropping him off at the Jesuit residence in Cusco, we had lunch in Saylla, a town which specializes in pork. It was Fr. Saturnine's idea, and he treated us.

It was a nice day, and even though I was tired I was glad to have gone; I've been wanting to visit one of the rural schools all year. Also, the view from the schoolyard alone was worth it:

Click on the image to englarge.

*You're Pd. Eddy

**October 31, for those who don't know.