Poco a poco.

I sat in my hammock reading one afternoon after school and my seven year old neighbor waltzed up to my porch.  Can we play, he wanted to know.  “No,” I told him, “I’m a little tired and relaxing from a hectic school day.  If you want to read with me, though, you can grab a book from inside and join me.”  I keep a small box of story books in Spanish in my house in an effort to encourage kids to read on their free time, knowing this is a bit of an uphill cultural battle.  However, since the other kids on the street had been interested, I knew Jose felt comfortable walking in a grabbing a book from the box.  He sat down on the porch next to the hammock and began to lazily flip through the pages.  I noticed he wasn’t looking at the words.  “Jose,” I said, “you have to read the words.  Why don’t you read out loud so you can practice?”  He shrugged.  “Es que no sé.”  I don’t know how.   The words vibrated between my ears.  You don’t know how to read and you’re seven?  This seemed like a catastrophe.  How could he not know how to read?  Jose had bounced around for the last year between two fighting parents who eventually separated and his grandparents’ house (my neighbors), where he usually stayed when neither of his parents could take care of him…which was beginning to be more and more often.  Perhaps last year, his first year of elementary school, was lost in the chaos of a breaking home.  Maybe he never learned because there was no one at home helping him.  I sat down next to Jose on the porch and tried to help him sound out the words, to no avail.  “Poco a poco, Jose.”  Little by little, just try, you’ll start to see the pattern.  He would stare back at my blankly and shake his head.  He simply didn’t know and had no idea how to begin.  I was at a loss.  

In the following days, as I mulled over Jose's reading abilities and those of the other kids in school, the reality hit me.  New books in Panama are very expensive relative to the budget most households have to manage.  Adults to do not read because of the lack of available literature, and kids do not read at home both because their parents do not like reading and because there are no books.  I remembered my time as a young reader in kindergarten.  My parents read to me ever since I could remember and I have such fond memories of reading that I never imagined a kid could feel otherwise about books.  Then, while complaining to a friend about how my neighbor couldn’t read, my friend corrected me.  “He’s what, in first grade?  Of course he doesn’t know how to read.”  Again, I was abashed.  I knew how to read by the time I was five.  “You learn to read in first grade here.  In kindergarten all kids learn how to do is trace letters and recognize them.  You have to do that before you read.”  So Jose wasn’t behind.  He was normal.  It turned out I was up against a much bigger monster than I thought—the system.

I have been working for over a year trying to get the kids I know interested in reading.  Thanks to a jump-start in the form of a donation from the U.S. Embassy, one of the two public librarians and I began hosting story hours in the library and inviting the small students from the elementary school.  Over the past year, attendance has fluctuated and the story hours have morphed but they have kept on, and my moment with Jose reminded that what we are doing is huge, even if most of the time it is small. A couple of months ago we started encouraging the kids at story hour to draw about the stories we read to them, and then encouraged them to help us read the stories.  One Saturday, as we closed down story hour and the kids made to leave, one asked, “Can I take this book home with me?”  He wanted to draw more.  I paused, somewhat shocked.  “Of course you can.  They’re for taking home.  Tell Jenny and she’ll tell you when you have to bring it back.”  A chorus of replies sounded.  “You mean we can take these home?!”  It had never occurred to me to explain to the kids that this was how the library worked.  I assumed they just knew.  Almost every kid at story hour that day checked out a book.  Finally, after a year of rocky starts, Jenny and I realized we had clumsily stumbled on a formula that worked.  Poco a poco, I thought, and I thought of Jose.  

The flood of kids in and out of my house is continuous but they have not lost interest in the books.  Each has his or her favorite, and the other day Eduardo, who everyone calls Pipe (pee-pay) even hid a book under my fridge so no one else could read it.  Even Jose’s two-year old sister comes over, puts her hands all over the books and mimics what she sees the older kids do.  Jose slowly began to bring home work that would lead him to reading.  As the months passed, I listened as his grandmother (who is my neighbor) painstakingly drilled him on phonetic combinations.  

It is now October, and a few days ago Jose’s silhouette appeared in my doorway.  “Chelsea, que haces?”  What was I doing?  I was on my way out to the porch with a book.  “You want to listen to me read?”  he asked.  Of course I do, I said.  Jose marched proudly to the book box and grabbed the book The Little Tin Soldier.  He curled his knees up, balanced the book on them and began to sound out the words, realizing that what he read corresponded to the pictures.  His little sister shuffled in and grabbed a couple of books, too.  She plopped down on the ground and opened a book upside down.  Her grandmother called her from next door, clearly worried she was trying to grab something breakable.  “Dona!!  What are you doing??”  Dona, in tiny voice, squeaked back, “studying.”  Her grandmother looked at me and smiled.

Poco a poco, I thought.  And I let Jose’s shaky words and Dona’s made up ones fill up my porch.