Another field trip with the kids from the Bioregionalismo class

Nous partons en balade avec Paola et les enfants qui suivent le cours de "Biorégionalisme" de Planet Drum avec un vingtaine de gamins.
Un peu comme une classe verte à la journée.
Les enfants viennent aussi pour etre ensemble, découvrir leur ville et ses environs sous un jour différent, ou bien simplement par curiosité.

Mais je préfère laisser cette description à Paola qui dirige ces classes et à rédigé un texte que je me suis permis de raccourcir et qui montre tres bien l ambiance de ses classes. C'est un texte qu'elle a écrit pour Planet Drum et c'est donc en anglais. Elle commence avec le tout début d’un cours :

"I was greeted with an immediate huddle around me as I arrived at the park; the usual “Senorita! Senorita!” followed by a ton of questions about what we will be doing and where will we be going. It’s a bit of a chaotic manner to begin class, but their excitement is electrifying nonetheless.

As I attempted a reasonable approach to listen to and mingle with what started as eight but quickly multiplied into 15 different kids, something remarkable was happening. In addition to those who had drawn maps of their neighborhood as homework, kids were eager to show me other things they had made as well. Andreina, who recently joined our class, brought in a banner she made with her sister. It reads: “Your beauty lies in your education and care for the environment, like a tree’s strength lies in its roots.” Only our third week and I am impressed with the kids’ growing interest, to say the least. […]

We started class with a quick overview of what we know about bioregionalism up to this point. Collectively, the kids were able to identify the five main categories of the bioregion and describe a few details about each. Our segment for the day focused on the 10 steps we can take to protect the bioregion. […]
Our best spoken presentation was made by Selena, who compared eating local foods versus buying prepackaged foods; a subject that all the kids proved to be proficient in. They told me that food that is brought to Bahia is not as beneficial as the local fruits and vegetables because it is not as healthy, it requires gasoline consumption to get here and produces more garbage in the end.

The following evening it was our turn to visit La Cruz, a four-story cement, white cross that stands on the tallest hillside behind the city of Bahia. The walk there is a strenuous stairway of no less than 300 steps, but somehow kids managed running the whole way to the top meanwhile talking, playing and even picking up trash. Once we reached the top of the cross, we could see the whole city and its natural surroundings. The kids pointed out the island of mangroves in the middle of the river. And they quickly spotted the Ceibos (the Ceibo is a local tree) on the hillside across the way; they are a uniquely attractive native tree with big thorns all the way up the trunk and, at this time of the year, they’ve bloomed beautiful red flowers. As we continued to be awed by the view, we observed frigate birds in the sky, one kayak in the river, fishing boats in the sea, farms in the distance, and spotted some of our homes in the city. Yerson, always an animated story-teller, told us about the day he went fishing with his dad. Instantly everyone else proceeded to share any other kinds of stories they could think of, and soon enough we were back to the unruly sound of 15 voices going all at once.
We ended our trip with our usual, and always desperately longed-for, dip in the ocean before parting ways. "

Paola Divito about classes done on May 20th and 22nd 2009