When sometimes the world around me gets discouraging, a reminder of the goodness out there arrives in an e-mail from my friend Lorrie Wilkes who is nurse/attorney now volunteering teaching English with refugees on the Greek Island of Samos. Thank you, Lorrie Wilkes.
"Dear Family and Friends,
And so, life goes on here day after day. More and more refugees arrive each day. The weather is still frequently rainy and cold. Last night there was heavy rain with thunder and lightening storms. I am here in my warm, dry and heated room and they are out in the damp and wet and cold. We do have some warmer sunny days in the 60s.
I am now only teaching. I teach three classes, five days a week in the Alpha Center (a refugee community center) with Samos Volunteers NGO. I am no longer at the medical clinic, or just sporadically if the desperately need me. My first class is with young women/young mothers. There are 4-10 of them every morning at 9:15 and so eager to learn English. Three or four of them have their babies at their breast while they are learning. One, Zahra, a young mother has learned to read in eight short days, going from the alphabet to reading. I was so happy and excited for her. "It is a cat." This is the first sentence she read that I wrote on the board. It brought tears to my eyes. She is in the first picture below first on the left with her two little girls. There is no translator for this class. I have figured out now how to teach without a translator :-) Necessity is the mother of invention!!
My second class is the ABC class for the community center. There are usually 26-28 students in this class, probably 2/3 men and one third women. I have no translator for this class as there are three languages spoken in this class: Farsi, Arabic and French with refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Cameroon and the Congo. They are all now speaking short dialogues in English and have learned the alphabet and now reading 3 letter words with consonant, vowel, consonant, like dog.
My third class at 3 p.m. is all Farsi speakers for basic English and here I have a translator, Nima, a young journalist from Iran. These students already know the alphabet but really cannot speak. I have them now speaking long dialogues about their families, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, if they have any sickness etc. They learn work groupings and then I have them speak in complete sentences putting the word groupings in practice about their lives. I use the Rassias method of short sentences and phrases in drills, over and over and over until they can speak the words fluently without halting between words and understanding what they are saying. This is the method I use when I teach at Dartmouth College within the Rassias Center. It works!!! They are speaking!!! No use learning words unless one can put them into speech with meaning and it is really happening!!! I get new students in the big classes every day, but somehow it all works. I think... "What would John Rassias (the creator of the Rassias method of teaching language) do in this situation of what I call controlled chaos? Just teach, speak and continue to drill. It works !! Thank you to Helene and Donna at the Dartmouth Rassias Center for teaching me these skills..
So, I guess I have found my new life's work. I love teaching English to the refugees. They are so motivated and eager to learn and so grateful. I will carry on as long as my health, mobility and mind will allow me. Right now my new knee is working perfectly.
I visited the overflow camp one evening... the only place outsiders are allowed. We are stopped by the Greek police from entering the camp proper where the ISO box shelters are, but they did allow us in the overflow camp after showing passports and medical NGO IDs. They do not want photographs to go out of camp with the squalor and living conditions there. The overflow camp has about 1500 - 2000 with many women and children. There is no running water or toilets or electricity in the overflow camp. How they live, I cannot say. They can go in the regular camp for food and a shower and toilet with many hours wait in a line for all so they pee and poop in the bushes in the camp.. find water in town and carry it back. The smell in there is bad. The overflow camp is on a steep and rocky hillside.
So, my plan is to work here another month, through the end of April. I have to exit for the month of May because of my Schengen (26 country EU type visa) and then come back. I have found a cheap boarding house in the Scotland Highlands (UK is not in the Schengen visa countries) where I can stay and rest and then come back here for the months of June and July to teach. Then my plan is to go to Amman Jordon where there are thousands and thousands of Syrian Refugees. I am now in the process of seeking places with NGOs to teach English there.
The pictures are of the overflow camps and my young mothers' class. The young woman third in on the right is blind. There is no Braille of course available in Afghanistan or here but regardless, she is learning to speak :-)
So much love to all of you this day,
Lorrie
If you are with a group to which I belong, or once did, mediators, singers, meditators, fiddlers, please pass this along :-) If you would like to contribute, please email me."
Lorrie’s e-mail is lorrie (dot) wilkes (at) gmail (dot) com
You can ask to be added to her e-mail list and ask her the best way to contribute..if desired.