Coeducación

Day 1


It was quite nervous to enter the classroom and meet my companions for the week, but the feeling disappeared right away. It was a warm and comfortable feeling to talk and listen to the hosts Rosa & Paula and my "co-workers". And you must know this ... I don't understand Spanish or French so I were in the gentle hands of people from Mexico, Spain, Chile and France who translated to me. I'm forever grateful!!

First we started with dancing and there is one more thing you must know ... I really can't dance. My feet and my head are not cooperating at all, but it was great fun.

After dancing we stood in a tight, very tight, circle and moved from side to side in silence ... hips against hips and arms around each other. It was just like a lullaby ... loved it!

To know each other is to see the person behind the smile, the laughter, the spoken word. So we looked deep, deep into the eyes of our companions and afterward  wrote a letter of appreciation; what did we sense? How did it make us feel? What do we wish in the future? The letter was of course written in our native language so Chela from Mexico wrote a wonderful letter to me in Spanish and I wrote a similar one in Swedish. 

After some coffee, and swedes really need lots and lots of it, we were ready to start the workshop again. There is an exhibition in the classroom and you are very welcome to experience that with us. Just ask Paula or Rosa and they will show you the way ...

The task now was to see how the world looks around us in terms of gender - male/female/both. Who does the household planning? Who drives the kids to school? Who is the headmaster of the school/preschool? Who takes care of the of the household economics? etc

It was quite interesting to experience the differences, but at the same time the similarities in the social structures independent from wherever we may come from.

The world isn't just black and white, there are lots of shades of grey that we have to take into the equation and really talk about, ie. there are lots of different ways how a family is structured - male/female, single moms and dads, same gender. So how are we coping with the "old" societies with their ways of living? Hmmm ... Interesting. 

... to be continued ...

Jarno Paananen

Sweden