Fragment of a journal.... Comè - Benin - Africa - 10/2007

Fragment of a journal.... Comè - Benin - Africa


…First day of school!! We have to wake up early to be at school at eight o’clock. I have to take some pictures and to install the multifunction on the other computer. But I am the teacher assistant instead, if I can define myself like that…
I start taking some pictures, then I let the children play on the slide, then with a ball and so on. The fist day of nursery school is a huge emotion. Someone adapts immediately, someone starts playing as soon as he sees his friend and someone starts crying and calls for his mother. From the beginning some children take a liking to me and keeps following me everytime I move. At ten o’clock in the morning I’m already tired as it would be ten o’clock in the evening. While the children are having a snack (a little of rice), I follow Nun Nadine and a child, who has not stopped crying till this morning and we go all together on errands. Tyreman, car electrician (who was not there) and a search for electrical equipment (we have to connect the voltage regulator). We are back and obviously now I am not the technician, but I keep on playing with the children instead. The sun is beating down and we stay under cover, but it’s very hot in the classrooms because there are no ceilings and the roof is made of eternit (the room is like an oven). But we are lucky and some clouds help us.
The children start to go into crisis and one after the other they start crying. What a beautiful concert!! I start playing with a child, then I start calling those who are looking at us. Then I take some chairs to make a half-circle and I start asking them to give me a five. One at a time, faster and faster. At the end we are eight with someone who participates and someone who simply looks at me. I’m having fun, it’s a huge emotion. After a while the children start doing other games and the child who was on errands with me and the nun before starts crying again, but always staying next to me. I put him on my legs and I start making him hop about. After a while he stops crying and falls asleep, a real spectacle, It has never happened to me before. He stays calm for half an hour; I can’t feel my legs and my ass is devastated because of the little wooden chair, but I don’t want to wake him up. The parents arrive taking home the children who are not staying for lunch; there is also the mother of my little crybaby/sleepy-head.
She takes him from my arms and she carries him on her back. While I try to make my blood circulate in my legs I almost start crying thinking about the coming back home in a month (and it’s only the firts morning, I can’t figure out how it will be in a month). I don’t remember my first day at school and I don’t have children, so i don’t know how you feel when you take them to school. But I think that it will be very difficult to forget this morning.

A little consideration: if I’ve taken epidemic parotits shaking hands with some children around, I don’t dare thinking about what I have catch today with all those children on me….