?Ram­dass Sook­lal, 89, is the old­est male AL­TA stu­dent and three of his daugh­ters are cur­rent AL­TA tu­tors. He at­tend­ed the screen­ing of The First Grad­er which was a fea­ture event at the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest. Bo­cas Lit is an an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tion of books, writ­ing and writ­ers.

At this event Sook­lal, sup­port­ed by two daugh­ters, read the ac­count he wrote of his jour­ney to lit­er­a­cy in­spired by the film. When he fin­ished read­ing, the au­di­ence erupt­ed in­to loud ap­plause with sev­er­al per­sons com­ing for­ward to com­mend him.

Here is what he wrote:

I am Ram­dass Sook­lal. At the age of 88 years I went back to school. My love­ly daugh­ter en­cour­aged me to sign up to a read­ing and writ­ing course called AL­TA. So like Maruge, I want­ed to learn to read and write bet­ter.

Maruge was firm­ly re­solved to go back to school and learn to read. His mo­ti­va­tion was his de­sire to read a very im­por­tant let­ter he re­ceived from the pres­i­dent. So with per­sis­tence, he strug­gled to ac­com­plish his goals. Noth­ing pre­vent­ed this great man from achiev­ing his pur­pose.

My ea­ger­ness to at­tend AL­TA class stems from my pas­sion for the Bible. The AL­TA class helped me im­prove my read­ing and writ­ing skill so, in turn, read­ing the Bible be­came more en­joy­able be­cause I could bet­ter un­der­stand it. Watch­ing the movie about Maruge in­spired and stirred a de­sire in me to nev­er give up or take things for grant­ed.

The rea­sons why I was not able to com­plete my pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion at the time, was be­cause on my way home from school one day, a stray dog bit and grasped my an­kle, se­ri­ous­ly dam­ag­ing it.

It took three years to ful­ly re­cov­er from my in­jury.

Dur­ing my re­cov­ery pe­ri­od, my fa­ther, the bread win­ner in the home, fell ill. I was then in­formed by my moth­er that my broth­er and I will take up the man­tle of pro­vid­ing for the house­hold. So my op­por­tu­ni­ty of a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion was dashed away from me.

Lat­er on in life, I got a job as a bus con­duc­tor and that boost­ed up my knowl­edge as I had to write down in­for­ma­tion like names and routes. I had to ask the dri­vers and in­spec­tors how to spell their names and oth­er in­for­ma­tion. I al­so lat­er owned and ran a small gro­cery where my wife, who had more knowl­edge than me about read­ing and writ­ing, helped me a bit.

As a fa­ther I try to in­stil the im­por­tance of a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion to chil­dren. My chil­dren will­ing­ly take my ad­vice. To­day, as a re­sult of my hard work en­sur­ing that my eight chil­dren got a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion, I am proud to say that they are do­ing well. I too, as a re­sult of my AL­TA class, am read­ing and writ­ing much bet­ter at 89.

Play your part to build lit­er­a­cy. If you have time, vol­un­teer to be an AL­TA tu­tor, a Read­ing Cir­cle guide or to as­sist stu­dents on the com­put­er. If your time is al­ready booked, spon­sor an AL­TA stu­dent for the year (TT$500). Call 624-AL­TA (2582) or email al­tatt@ya­hoo.com

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