K is for Kitab

During my first week in Athens volunteering with Kitab World Education I had very few students. (Kitab is pronounced Kit-aab with the emphasis on the aab)  Last term, when I wasn’t here,  Kitab offered regular daily English and Greek lessons but they became too popular and attracted so many and such a wide diversity of students that the neighbors complained. Our class size has now been limited to five. We don’t want to be evicted from this building where we rent both a classroom and a volunteer apartment, so we’re toeing the line.

Kitab classroom - quite nice,
especially now that we have electricity!

 

Yes, diversity was apparently part of the problem: I’m told that many Athenians, because of historic connections, have some sympathy with Syrians, but they’re less welcoming of people from Afghanistan and of black Africans.  We still bring in students of all ethnicities, but in small numbers.

Also, volunteers are becoming harder to find and we’re now short of teachers. I’m essentially the only one, and I’m not a qualified teacher, more of a seat-of-the-pants sort of person. It certainly pays to be flexible round here.



View from classroom window

Yesterday, for instance. I had scheduled a 9:30 English session with staff at the Hope Café. The café’s a meeting place for refugees that offers a free lunch, coffee and by-appointment clothing distribution. The staff are mainly Syrian teenage boys who volunteer their time to make and serve coffee, clean tables, and do other café jobs. They, like most of the refugees here, want to learn English because the language is seen as - probably is - the door to a new life in a European country. They begin work at 11am, so I’m offering 9:30 lessons several days a week.

Volunteers at Hope Café

Art at Hope Cafe

Five kilos of lentils cleaned by Julia at Hope café

The first day, eight people attended, not all of them staff, but who cares? Adnan, my advanced student, joined us, despite having said he wouldn’t. None of the others was a complete beginner but the range was huge!  We had fun. The second day there were three and the third day, one.

The third day was yesterday, which is the day I’m trying to describe.

 

So I have this one guy from the staff, Radi, for an English lesson and we talk about the parts of the body.  Perhaps the main achievement is getting him to understand the difference between “write” and “draw”. He wanders off after a while.  All this time the early morning business of the café – cleaning, organizing, food prep – is going on around us and at another table my colleague Mary Ellen is conducting a lesson with half a dozen Kurdish people.  What are they doing in the café before opening time? Well, Mary Ellen met them here a few days ago and arranged these lessons. She’s focusing on the vocabulary of cooking, because they’re right beside the kitchen, which is open to the café.

 

Radi’s disappeared but some new people have appeared at my table: the café’s not really open but Sam is letting people in and I’ve been joined by a Syrian woman in hijab and long gown, and her three young children.  The mother doesn’t reply to my greeting, just smiles; then the oldest child turns to her and signs rapidly. “Oh” I say, and touch my hands to my ears questioningly. “Yes” says the little girl – we’ll call her Amanda – “she doesn’t hear or speak.”

 

Amanda, at 9 years old, has an excellent command of English. I predict for her a job as a translator. But today she’s interested in coloring: I have coloring pages of Dora the Explorer and Ben Ten, both of whom Amanda knows from pre-war Syria. This reminds me of my motivation to come and volunteer: I realized  that these people had lives just like ours until one day the bombs came. It could happen anywhere.

 

Back from the café, at 12 noon I have a session in the Kitab classroom with Karwan, an Iraqi Kurd of about 26 years old who’s here in Athens with his wife and three children. This is his third lesson. He speaks little English but today he asks for something specific. He gives me to understand that he knows how to write the capital letters of the English alphabet, and he demonstrates this for me, but he’s unsure of writing the small letters. So that’s what we do, or rather, he does and I encourage, for an hour and a half, writing whole lines of each letter very carefully. He’s really dedicated. We get to Q before time is up and he takes the rest home to do before his next lesson.  I admire his persistence, it’s a good way to learn!

I think that’s the day’s last lesson but I’m wrong. Just after three the doorbell goes. “That’ll be your pizza” I say to colleague Deena who’s cleaning the kitchen. “I’ll run down and get it.”  No pizza. Instead, there’s a young man and woman with a baby in a pram (baby carriage).   “English lesson,” she says “I’m here for English lesson, 3 o’clock.”  I’m mystified. “Kitab?” I ask “Aida? Barbara?” naming the organizers.

The young woman smiles and walks in.  Hmm, I wonder what’s going on here.  I take them into the classroom, leave them there and run upstairs (in the elevator/lift) to ask in the volunteer apartment  “Anyone expecting students for a lesson?” No one is.   We decide that they were probably coming at this time last term and were expecting the schedule to be the same, which it isn’t, as there is no schedule (or timetable if you’re British). Never mind, I can, so I do: I go back to the classroom and start a lesson.

As with all first sessions, I try to figure out where they are with English. The woman, Mary, is Afghan and she’s at an advanced level; the baby, Leo, is four months old and speaks only the universal language of the very young; the man, Zoran, is Iranian and speaks barely a word of English but is very loud and wants to dominate the proceedings. We talk about family: simple sentences about mother, father, brother, sister and so on. I invite them to come back at 3pm the next day. Teaching two such different levels in one lesson will be a challenge but since they’re a couple it should work, with her helping him.

Now I really have finished work for the day. My Greek volunteer friend Vera calls round at 5. We drink tea on the balcony, then go out to eat.   I unload some of my multifaceted day on her and she listens patiently. The food is mediocre, but the wine and the company are good.

And that’s a Kitab day!

 

Hi-tech: Mary Ellen has her grandchildren in Minnesota
talk with the refugee children here in Athens.