By Susan Smith | Director
Rene
One day several years ago, I arrived early at the Atzin Centre in Tlamacazapa to find a white string strung across the entrance to its large patio where classes were held. "Marie, what´s with the string?" I asked the volunteer trainer who was working with our Tihueliske, We Can! Education Program for children. "That string is for my sanity," Marie explained, "Rene always comes at the crack of dawn and wants to look at books. I am still in my pyjamas and haven´t even had my coffee yet. So, when I take the string down, Rene can come in and start reading along with the other early bird kids." She was pleased with her solution, and I laughed - Rene would live at our Centre if he could, in fact, he liked books so much that he had started reading the dictionary word by word, page by page, in order to expand his vocabulary.
Rene's family lives nearby in a small adobe house; he is the first person in his family to learn to read and write and it didn't come easily. Starting in 2007, Rene rarely missed a Tihueliske class. Now 17 years old he is close to acheiving his primary school certificate, studying under the guidance of two educators three afternoons per week. He says, "I like coming to class because I learned something new every day. I want to be a good person in life and reading is important to me. It allows me to travel anywhere outside the village, to take any bus and know where I am going because I can read highway and street signs. Also, I now can teach my sister, Liliana, and my mother; they also need to be able to read." No slouch when it comes to work, Rene is following in his father's footsteps, "I like working with my Dad in the fields, carrying water and cutting firewood. I especially enjoy cutting palm in the forest because my Mom then can weave palm baskets and we sell them. I like to care for my parents alot."
Rene´s family could not afford to send him to regular public school but our Tihueliske Education Program gave him the right tools in his drive for knowledge. Simply put, Rene was and still is a most persistent person, and no thin string is going to hold this young man back!
Susan October 2017.
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