Rhea-Si­mone Au­guste

My moth­er died when I was six and things were tough be­cause my dad sold the land to take care of her. There were 14 of us and my dad did the best he could. When he could af­ford it, he would send us to school. On those days he would car­ry us to the stand­pipe with a buck­et and cloth and wash and dry us. He would iron our uni­forms with an iron heat­ed over a coalpot.

My fa­ther was un­able to read. We lived in Rio Claro and our rel­a­tives lived in the vil­lage of Pe­nal.

When­ev­er he could get the trans­port, he took us to vis­it our rel­a­tives. Along the way he looked for school signs, po­lice sta­tion signs, church signs and land­marks. That is how he taught us when we trav­elled as chil­dren. That is what I had to take me through, un­til Al­ta.

What­ev­er my fa­ther had he gave to us. If he on­ly had one pound of flour he made a "sug­ar bake" and made sure that every­body ate while he drank on­ly a cup of wa­ter and went to bed hun­gry. Just mak­ing sure that we all ate was enough for him.

My sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fam­i­ly came from my fa­ther.

God can walk on all crooked lines. He walked on mine, tak­ing me to Al­ta.

Not hav­ing a clue about Al­ta, he di­rect­ed my path to the li­brary. I was work­ing as a clean­er in a bank but could not be made per­ma­nent be­cause I had no school leav­ing cer­tifi­cate.

I was at­tempt­ing to en­rol in a plumb­ing class when I went to the Ari­ma Li­brary in­stead of the Ari­ma Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School. The li­brary se­cu­ri­ty guard asked me if I had come for Al­ta. I asked, "What is Al­ta?" She ad­vised me to go to the door and see for my­self. That was God walk­ing on my crooked lines, the open­ing up of my whole new world with Al­ta.

Find­ing Al­ta is like find­ing a di­a­mond. I felt ashamed at the first mo­ment en­ter­ing the class. It did not last very long. Af­ter the Al­ta in­tro­duc­tions I felt much bet­ter be­cause every­one was in the same boat, we were there to do bet­ter for our­selves. We be­came a fam­i­ly, the Al­ta fam­i­ly, en­cour­ag­ing and shar­ing. We had to get be­yond the pride. Now we meet each oth­er on the streets and talk.

Go­ing to Al­ta meant that I was away from home for longer pe­ri­ods, but my fam­i­ly ad­just­ed to it ear­ly be­cause they want­ed bet­ter­ment for me. My fam­i­ly was proud to know that I could read big words like "pic­turesque."

They made sil­ly jokes by say­ing, "Watch your lan­guage around Mom be­cause she could speak prop­er Eng­lish now." When I wrote short forms like Mr and Rd, they were amazed. They were shocked and sur­prised when I wrote my own gro­cery list with­out help. This meant that my hus­band and chil­dren had more free time to them­selves since I could do these things for my­self.

Be­fore Al­ta, when my hus­band and I at­tend­ed mar­riage en­counter week­ends and every­one was tak­ing notes at the di­a­logue ses­sions, I scrib­bled on the page so peo­ple would not know that I couldn't write. I moved the pen across the page writ­ing the let­ters of the al­pha­bet over and over. Af­ter the di­a­logue, when I met to share with my hus­band, I told him all that I want­ed to write but nev­er wrote down.

My hus­band spon­sored me as an Al­ta stu­dent in my Lev­el 3 year. My hus­band saw what Al­ta did for me and he want­ed to give back to Al­ta. In my let­ter to my spon­sor-hus­band I thanked him for be­ing there for me through the years. I thanked him for how he coped with me through God, how he stayed with me through­out my strug­gle with lit­er­a­cy. Af­ter 17 years of mar­riage, I was fi­nal­ly able to let him know in writ­ing that I ap­pre­ci­at­ed him be­ing my hus­band. In that let­ter there were no spelling er­rors. He lam­i­nat­ed the let­ter and has kept it safe. He says he will read it as part of the eu­lo­gy if I pass away be­fore him.

I had nev­er re­ceived a cer­tifi­cate be­fore at­tend­ing Al­ta. Now I have Lev­el 1, Lev­el 2 and Lev­el 3 cer­tifi­cates. To me, these cer­tifi­cates are like hav­ing a uni­ver­si­ty de­gree. Each time I com­plet­ed an Al­ta lev­el my fam­i­ly host­ed the cel­e­bra­tions. And all tu­tors and stu­dents at­tend­ed. The whole fam­i­ly was al­ways present and there were al­ways tears and laugh­ter.

I am not ashamed to go pub­lic. When my three chil­dren were grow­ing up I couldn't read flu­ent­ly to them. Now I can read to my grand­chil­dren. I couldn't put notes in my chil­dren's lunch kits. Now I write five notes on the week­ends for my grand­chil­dren, one note a day. There is no need to ask any­one to help me fill out forms. I can do it on my own now. I al­ways won­dered how peo­ple knew how to do these things.

I want to con­tin­ue my ed­u­ca­tion. I want to do CXC (High School diplo­ma). I would like the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to Al­ta class­es and share with the stu­dents a bit. I want to talk di­rect­ly to them so that they will stay in class. I want to spon­sor a stu­dent to Al­ta class­es, just like my hus­band spon­sored me.

Learn­ing to read opened up a whole new world for me. It has giv­en me con­fi­dence. Read­ing is so ex­cit­ing. The best part is I can read to my grand­chil­dren. I could not wait for them to come out of the womb to start read­ing to them.

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 e-mail al­tatt@ya­hoo.com