WAIT Initiation Trip
Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies
March 5th-24th, 2007

Week Two: Grenada – Making it Real.

Written by Cathlene Bell, Triton Marks, Mike Ferrete and Lan Tsubata

 

We started week two bright and early, heading out on the now familiar hour long drive to the province of St. John’s. We arrived at the New Love Secondary School, also known as Newlo, a trade school for youth who were struggling in traditional secondary school. It was apparent that the school had suffered tremendously from Hurricane Ivan, which had devastated the entire country of Grenada two short years ago. Adding to the already difficult socio-economic status, the hurricane only made matters worse. Our performance space was filled with debris from reconstruction, which we immediately helped to clean up. But the space was still very dirty, and as the students entered the room, they were instructed to remain standing for the whole performance. Being in such circumstances compelled us to work even harder, to ensure that each audience member would receive this message.

As we were performing “Hero,” Lan noticed one young man paying particular interest to her sign language. She later found out that he was deaf, but knows American Sign Language. He helped Lan with her sign language for the songs, by giving a more accurate translation of the lyrics.  

Later on we went to another performance at a nearby catholic primary school, where we encountered an unexpected problem - the school didn’t know we were coming! Things were a bit confusing, but after speaking with Linda Straker and several other contacts, the situation was resolved, and we were welcomed into the school. The performance turned out to be very successful. The audience was composed of about 150 youth from age 9 to 14. All the kids were really happy. It’s like we all met 150 younger siblings.

After that, we were able to meet Leslie Pierre, the owner of a large Grenadian newspaper. In such a small country - Grenada is just 23 miles long, 12 miles wide – Mr. Pierre is a true powerhouse. In his 10 years of missionary work in Grenada, Uncle Roddy was able to develop a strong relationship with Mr. Pierre. We sang and breakdanced to Uncle Roddy’s original family song “If You Want to be Heard,” and then closed with the WAIT song “Hero.” Moved by our simple performance, Mr. Pierre told us that we are his heroes.

On Tuesday, we began the day with a local performance at St. George’s Anglican Senior School. We performed for several hundred students, all of whom responded very enthusiastically. Equally enthusiastic were the teachers and staff, who expressed their resolve to create a WAIT team of their own. The school is extremely talented, judging from what we saw in the final act and their own presentation following our performance, and we hope to keep in close contact with the Vice Principal of this awesome school.
After the morning’s performance, we returned to Chepa, where 80 students had signed up to participate in a training. In addition to the Chepa students, several students from Newlo also came, in order to be able to start their own WAIT team.

We wanted to be sure that the participants were truly serious about taking on this work, so Lan explained the core standard of WAIT – including an abstinent, non-dating lifestyle – and expressed that if they could not follow the standards, they could not do WAIT. Several people left. Most did not.

After that, we gave the Powerpoint, which clearly opened the students’ eyes to the reality of the global HIV/AIDS situation. It became increasingly apparent to them throughout the presentation that this is no ordinary performing arts group. Following the PowerPoint, we worked on teaching the skit. We split into groups based on skit roles, and each trainer spent time teaching the specifics of the particular role, and basic theatre guidelines. We then met back up to run through the skit. Representatives of each group were chosen for each skit part, and they did a good job!

Building on the success of the skit training, we went into breakout sessions, asking the trainees to select one area of performing that they wanted to focus on. We had 4 groups – breakdancing, dance, music and singing. We spent about an hour getting to know the students, and training them in technique as well as (more importantly) the heart behind performing. They all responded well, and worked hard, especially after hearing that they would perform what they worked on for the rest of the trainees!

Soon, we all gathered back in the main room to exhibit the fruits of our labors. First up were the breakdancers, trained by Mike and several of the Portelances. The trainees each did freestyles showing what they learned, all of which were excellent. Next up were the dancers, headed up by Lan, . Last was the singing group. The music trainees had just received their first guitar lessons and were unable to play a complete song, so music trainer Triton played guitar as the singers, trained by Cathlene, Shizuka and Kiyoshi, sang “Hero”. We rewarded the trainees with lavish applause for their hard work, then quickly wrapped up with some closing remarks, and distribution of materials to representatives of each school.

            On Wednesday, we traveled to The Anglican High School, a local all-girl school in St. George’s. All of the girls were very bright and responsive, and we had a great time presenting to them. Many of the girls swarmed our team with pens and paper, asking for our autographs and contact information, which got a bit overwhelming. This caused our team to get slightly unfocused, and as we drove away from the school, we backed the van into a steep curb, and got stuck! We spent a very tense half hour carefully attempting to lodge bits of concrete underneath the tires, hoping they could coerce the tire up over the curb. We finally succeeded, getting the van out without any damage to the van. Over lunch, we reflected on why the accident happened. We concluded that in the work of saving lives, there is no room for acting like a celebrity.

            Since we had no performances or trainings in the afternoon, we decided to visit Flamingo Bay. This is one of the best spots in the Caribbean for snorkeling and scuba diving, and our team thoroughly enjoyed every minute observing the wonders beneath the waves. It was an eye opening experience, to say the least.

            After a few hours at the beach, Uncle Roddy, Linda Straker, Lan and Triton met at the Grenadian local AM radio station for a live broadcast interview. The remaining contingent managed to get home just in time to tune in, and listen as the WAIT representatives eloquently explained the workings of WAIT, and our intentions to start teams in Grenada, all of which was well received. Being able to create this kind of national impact was amazing, and a great way to close the day.

            On Thursday, we ventured into new territory – the province of St. David’s, which lies on the south-eastern shore of Grenada. We were invited to the Newlo Junior Life Center, to perform for an audience of about 20 youth and teachers. Despite a narrow stage and lots of mosquitoes, we pulled off a good performance. Several of the teachers were particularly moved by our message, and are committed to aiding us in its spread. We concluded our day with a relaxing return visit to Flamingo Bay

          
  Friday was our final day together with all of the Portelances, and we were determined to make it as successful as possible. We were blessed enough to receive the opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell. After answering some questions, we sang “Hero.” Prime Minister Mitchell was deeply moved, as he shared his thoughts on the song, which correlated perfectly with the message we try to convey. He assured us that we are doing excellent work, and that WAIT will always be welcome in Grenada.

 

 

            Motivated by the Prime Minister’s words, we set out for the day’s performances, which were in St. John’s province. It took us our usual hour of driving through the mountains to get to St. Johns. We got to one of St. Johns’ secondary schools about an hour late due to our meeting with the Prime Minister. The whole school of 5 to 14 year old students quickly gathered into one of their classrooms where there was a stage for us to perform on. There were approximately 250 students and teachers present for our performance and from what we could tell they all thoroughly enjoyed the presentation. For our final act we even had about 100 or more kids came up on stage to dance with us! It was great.

            After our performance we had to quickly pack up for our next performance in St Johns. Before we left the Principal and teachers gave us some refreshments that we were truly grateful for, then many of the students helped us pack our equipment into the van. Before we left we handed out some information to the students and teachers and then had to leave for our next presentation about 20 minutes away.  

            Our next performance was for the Imani program. The audience here was of college students and college aged youth who were attending sessions concerning different types of job opportunities. We performed for the whole group of about 300 people. At first I could see they were a bit skeptical of what the performance was going to be. They very quickly warmed up to the performance and were very interactive when it came to the game show. After the performance we talked to a few of the participants who we knew beforehand from the performance and training we did at Chapa. We stayed with the Imani program participants for about 45 minutes after our performance ended, just talking to them about starting a WAIT team or being part of the process somehow.

            We left the Imani program to drive to our next performance down the street. While in the car we quickly ate our PBJ sandwiches because we were starving! We arrived at another secondary school which was to be our last performance in St Johns. We got there to discover that many of the kids were already assembled and so we had to quickly set up and start our performance. By this time many of us were so exhausted and thought this was our last performance in Grenada so we really pushed ourselves to do the best we could do. The audience size here was of at least 300 students ages 4-14 so one would expect them to be very rowdy but they were very well behaved as most all of the kids are in Grenada. The performance ended beautifully and the Principal came up to thank us, further encouraging her students to WAIT.

         We were all absolutely exhausted after this performance yet all the WAIT members somehow found the energy to keep investing in the kids by talking to them after the performance and the students were so attached to many of the WAIT members that they surrounded

the van and made it very hard for us to leave, haha.

            On our way back to Lance Aux Epines we ate some hot lunches that our driver, Derek, picked up from the Imani program. The food was delicious and very much appreciated. We got home around 4pm thinking that we had just done our last performance to find out that we still had one more performance that night at a youth group service. Some of us were a little depressed by the news of there being one more performance because we were all so exhausted. but we very quickly recuperated and saw the blessing of having yet another opportunity to reach out and save lives.

              We got to the church (which was only about a 10 minute drive from home) around 6pm as was scheduled however no one was there and the doors were locked. About 10 minutes later someone came and unlocked the doors for us. We then set up and practiced for the performance. We performed for the youth at around 7:30pm after a prayer and a few church songs. We thought that this performance was our last performance so we decided to really have fun with it so we changed skit roles and even had some of the girls do the break dancing! It was a full energy performance and the audience responded very well to it. During the final act we had some great dancers come up including our driver Derek! He has got skills!

            The performance ended and we talked to the youth and adults and we learned that the youth pastor that organized our performance was a teacher at the Newlo school in St. Johns and plans to help the WAIT team develop at his school. Pretty awesome! It was very inspiring talking to him and many of the people there because they could see the value of the message presented.

            After we left the church, instead of going home to eat Uncle Roddy took us out to pizza! Uncle Roddy was so great not only because he bought all of us pizza but because he cares so much for Grenada we could see it in every person he talked to and everything he did. We were sad to see him, David-Paul and Nakita leave the next morning. That last night was spent being together and enjoying all the hard work that everyone had done. It was a very successful day.

            No performances were scheduled on Saturday, so to maximize our final few days in Grenada, we opted to schedule a meeting with two teachers willing to head up a WAIT team. We met with Anika and Leronda at the Creole Shack in downtown St. George’s, where we discussed important factors of WAIT team participation and coordination. Both teachers were steadfast in their determination to have WAIT in Grenada. Anika had to leave for a college class, so we spent the next few hours sightseeing with Leronda in downtown St. George’s.

            On Sunday morning, we didn’t know what to expect of the performance that was planned at a church called the Apres Toute Pentecostal Lighthouse. A simple performance and a cricket game with the kids was what we had in mind. We ended up spending the whole day interacting and mingling with the congregation of the church.

            We arrived during the service which entailed much singing and dancing. The sermon by the pastor was very inspiring. Afterward, they served us a special dish called Oil-down, which is the national dish of Grenada. We felt very fatigued after the meal but all the kids wanted us to play cricket with them. We walked down a long steep path to the field. The boys had a great time with the kids as they taught them this new sport. Meanwhile, the girls spent time in the shade, teaching different dances and parts of the skit and interacting in a different way, but having an equally great time. Once the game had ended, we walked back up the mountain to the church, and performed for the congregation and their guests. Everyone enjoyed it, and many came up for our final act to sing and dance with us. As the final day of our stay in Grenada came to an end, we could truly feel the spirit of the country and its people. We had a lot of hope in the new Granada WAIT teams, and were ready to take on our next country: Trinidad.

Stay tuned for Week Three!

Back to Week One: Grenada – Spreading the Word

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