Kugichagulia & kuumba
Marquez, Monica M
REPORT FROM SAINT BART'S KUGICHAGULIA & KUUMBA ALSO UMOJA, UJIMA, IMANI, NIA, UJAMAA I am a Hispanic from Colorado. In 19911 graduated from Stanford with a degree in political science. Now I live...
...Black education stresses the seven principles: Kugichagulia, self-determination...
...These third-graders dream of Commonweal no less than going to college and becoming doctors and lawyers and scientists and artists and corporate executives...
...Unfortunately, I see in the eyes of some of the older students that doors have already closed and locked...
...Kuumba, manifested and practiced, means to leave the world a better, more beautiful place...
...imani, faith...
...Daily...
...It terrifies me to think this degenerative process seems inevitable...
...Parts of the city look like a ravaged war zone...
...I admit that life as a Jesuit Volunteer is far from glorious...
...Drugs and prostitution are rampant...
...Some dark, rainy February mornings I arrive at school at 7:20 a.m...
...Certainly there are times as a teacher when I become exasperated, especially at the fights over pencils and stickers and who insulted whose mother...
...and wish I were anywhere else but facing another day with my third-graders...
...He is referring to its greatest tragedy: the children trapped here are the undeserving heirs of a sinkhole of filth and ugliness...
...Neither took the extra step to discover what I call the "fruits of exasperation...
...Anyone who has read Jonathan Kozol's excellent book Savage Inequalities (Crown Publishers) or flipped through this Commonweal year's January 20 Time magazine is already familiar with the grisly side of Camden...
...And if they were ever bear-hugged for no reason by even one of these beautiful children, they didn't write about it...
...The children of Saint Bartholomew's are brimming with God's love and kuumba...
...They failed to look beyond the surface and discover that there is also a torch of hope that burns in Camden...
...ujamaa, support/respect...
...and kuumba, creativity...
...As I dump my backpack loaded with graded workbooks on my desk, I look around the empty room and see the construction-paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, the slightly crooked rows of desks, the black Jesus, the African-American flag in the corner, and I try to remind myself why I am here...
...nia, purpose...
...Catholic education emphasizes the constancy of God's love...
...On hot, humid days, the stench becomes nauseating...
...They didn't experience, for example, the Christmas rap my class performed, complete with a hot-pink pregnant Mary, four jammin' angels with white turtlenecks and M.C...
...My favorite is kuumba, which refers to human creativity...
...This city is Camden, New Jersey...
...They never observed these Baptist and Muslim children burst into a spontaneous round of "She's a Grand Old Flag" on the snowy streets of downtown Philadelphia during a field trip...
...But Kozol and Time missed something...
...And although the Saint Bart's third-graders know far more than I ever did at their age about drugs and violence, in their journals they record their visions of the future with the unabashed confidence of an eight-year-old American child...
...MONICA M. MARQUEZ Monica M. Mdrquez is a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps...
...I even want to scream sometimes when I return to my classroom and realize that I feel grateful and lucky because some friends have donated an old hand-cranked pencil sharpener and two playground balls...
...The neighborhood priest calls this the city of "broken wings...
...They weren't present when the New Jersey Young Audience's black dance troupe came and gave our children a chance to get on stage and experience modern dance...
...I become frustrated when I visit wealthy suburban Catholic schools and stare in awe at their computers, music rooms, and playgrounds...
...We may or may not change their future, but as teachers we can inject poetry and music and art and science into the bloodstream of the classroom, and thereby bring the children a tiny step closer to those dreams...
...Hammer shades, and some real cool shepherds and wisewomen...
...Kozol and Time told the ugly truth, but they only gave part of the story...
...The city's alleys are strewn with potholes and broken glass, and most of its people live in poverty...
...They didn't witness the overwhelming generosity of Saint Bartholomew's children during the Thanksgiving food drive, or participate in the black history, art, and poetry contests, or attend the culminating showcase of class performances at the black history assembly...
...umoja, unity...
...The air here in the southern part of the city reeks of burning trash and sewage...
...Perhaps the world can learn something from them...
...They didn't witness a spelling bee conducted in sign language...
...I become weary when I walk home to the dilapidated volunteer house, greeted on the way by the stench of the South Camden sewer and the homeless people who sit all day on our stoop to drink...
...The children of Camden laugh and dance...
...Neither made it to Saint Bartholomew's, the school where I teach...
...I am touched by their undaunted aspirations...
...Yet, this is a "young" city: It is teeming with the energy and potential of its residents, better than half of whom are less than twenty-five years old...
...We have no delusions of heroically rescuing them from their fate...
...They never overheard the prayers whispered solemnly for the classmate whose grandmother-guardian had just died...
...They missed seeing our children pick up trash on the playground or share their meager lunches with those who don't have any...
...Sometimes I feel the exasperation that Kozol must have felt after visiting Camden's public schools...
...mountains of rubble lie adjacent to abandoned homes and factories...
...Now I live and work in a third-world city, far away from the American life I left behind to become a volunteer teacher...
...ujima, working together...
...We teachers can't hand these children their dreams...
Vol. 119 • September 1992 • No. 16
