Storys

Nerline is 7 years old. I do homework with her on a regular basis and I noticed how much she likes math and how good she is at it. So I started to explain multiplication to her in a playful way, although she is not able to do it yet, but I noticed that the math class doesn’t challenge her. Nerline learned to multiply very quickly and I now have to constantly give her new tasks.

Neiva is 10 years old. I have a particularly close relationship with her. Neiva is a very smart girl and I really enjoy studying with her. The other day she told me that when she came to the Education Center the first time she thought football was a men’s sport and she wouldn’t get an opportunity to play. But this year she started to train and also to play. “Playing football has enriched my everyday life here at the Center a lot. I now love to play football.” But Neiva doesn’t just have a talent for football. She is very versatile. She also takes piano lessons, she is very good at dancing and one of those girls who goes surfing as well.

I often use the football training with the U16 girls to talk about a wide variety of topics. I often prepare for it by researching the Internet. Not long ago I was sitting with 8 players and we were talking about sexual abuse. Tarrafal is considered to be the municipality with the most abuse cases in Cape Verde. All of the players have had bad experiences with men and we talked about them. In the end I took a few stones and assigned a location to each stone: police, school, Education Center, court, municipality and others. Then I asked the girls where they would go if they were sexually abused. One of the girls said to the police, everyone else said they would come to us … I am pleased to have them place their trust on us.

While we were doing activities in the Art Room with the kids, two kids start talking to each other about their teachers punishing them in class. One starts by saying that the teacher beats them with a stick nicknamed by himself as “Chocolate Ferrero” because he said “it’s the best chocolate in the world”. So, whenever they don’t do the assignments or misbehave, the teacher tells them “you’ll get chocolate Ferrero”. The kids keep on saying that other punishments include: “grab me by the hair … grab me by my lips … making jokes about me being stupid, etc.” They also go on telling me about other teachers who bring an iron stick inside her bag and beats them with it when she gets mad at them. There is also a teacher who they say brings a whip in his bag and uses it to punish kids for misbehaving. I believe these facts proof the importance of Delta Cultura.

Zequinha 14 years old, comes to the Center regularly and likes to use the Internet for research purposes. Some time ago his cellphone broke. In his distress, he came to me and said he needed the Internet for research purposes, he wanted to try to repair his cellphone and look for instructions on the Internet. No sooner said than done and he actually succeeded. “Since then, friends have been coming to me all the time asking me to fix their cellphones as well.” …

Sandrine is 6 years old and my job is to do homework with her. Sandrine knows, of course, that we don’t force her to do homework, but I am always trying to convince her to do it. One day it was particularly difficult to convince her to concentrate for a moment and do the homework. “Look, if you concentrate and I help you, we’ll be done within 20 minutes.” I tried to motivate her. “Oh, Cutchinha. My heart doesn’t want to do homework today”, was her very convincing answer.