Submitted by Jacqueline Warner on the 2017 winter session program in Barbados sponsored by the Department of Human Development and Family Studies…
While in Barbados, I had a 50 hour internship at a public primary school. The experience was incomparable, we were completely immersed in the culture and I experienced first hand what life on the island is like, formed relationships with people from whom I learned more than I ever would have in class and I met children who will have a lasting impact on my future career in the field of Early Childhood Education and Development. I hope that I also had a lasting impact on all of the wonderful people I met. I will never forget this experience. Each day I came into the classroom and greeted all 24 of the 4 and 5 year old students with a cheery “Good Morning” and they would always respond “Good Morning Auntie Jacqueline”. On the island, and in some places in the U.S. as well, Auntie is a endearing term used for elders that you have a close personal relationship with. The school day consisted of lessons, snack, more lessons, then lunch and playtime and more lessons in the afternoon. The children learned reading, writing, art, math, health and sports. Literacy is one of the main focuses in the curriculum for the younger children as it is seen as a base for all other learning and the island boasts a literacy level of over 90%. Education is free, but children need to buy uniforms and school supplies for the classroom. Lunches at my school were one Barbados dollar a week, or fifty U.S. cents, but if children could not afford them, they were still given food. The teachers in public schools have a large workload, they have more children in their classroom than they should and they have to provide all of the supplies for their class. They are given a chalk board, desks, chairs and sometimes chalk, but everything else comes out of their pocket. The teachers have to also provide soap and toilet paper for the students because the school cannot afford to buy it for everyone. The economy is Barbados is not doing well, the recession of 2008 is still affecting tourism, their biggest industry, and since the Brexit vote the pound has been devalued and so there are not as many tourists from the UK and the UK is their biggest tourism market because Barbados is a part of the commonwealth. Despite these challenges, the children still play games each day and learn with excitement and brought joy to my experience here.
I was so sad to leave all of these people I felt like I had just met, especially the children. Attached is a selfie I took with some of the children in my class – they love taking pictures with me. The highlight of my last day, however, was not really about the children – it was about my teachers. The teachers heard we had not had the traditional dish of coucou and pudding as well as souce. Coucou and pudding is pork with peppers and pickled vegetables from the slave diet. They used to eat the leftover scraps of vegetables and the pig feet, tails, ears and tongues from their master’s leftovers and today they eat a similar dish with better cuts of meat. Souce is mashed sweet potatoes with gravy that has salted fish in it from the transportation of fish to and from Canada on boats where the men would have to salt the fish heavily in order to preserve them. I also tried red pepper sauce which is like hot sauce, but made with Bajan red peppers — it is much hotter than our hot sauces, I could only have a little bit. I liked the food more than I thought I would — especially the souce, I loved that. It reminded me of turkey and mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving. Our foods and traditions are more similar than they are different.
When I went back to class, we had rest time and then each child came up to me individually and I hugged them and handed them a piece of candy (a full sized air head from the local supermarket, Massy). It was hard not to cry when I was saying good-bye individually, but as a group I was able to hold it together. The children climbed on my legs and asked me to pick them up, so of course I did, and they loved it. As I was walking out the door, I had to pull some of them off of me in order to escape. One girl followed me out to “go to the bathroom” but she told me she just wanted to watch me walk away — it brings a tear to my eye. I will miss them so much, and I hope that I will be able to see them again one day.