What will surprise you is that the parents of these children are not charged by Swain for her service— not even for the lessons.
“I know when people hear something is free they think it is not worth it. But I know of children paying for sessions and still they are not learning anything.”Swain’s commitment to her students goes beyond the money— not that she doesn’t have uses for it like everyone else.
Instead she has a genuine zeal to see children excel academically as she did, despite coming from an impoverished background. “The first time I wore shoes to school was when I passed for St Joseph’s Convent, St Joseph and honestly I couldn’t even walk in it,” Swain said.
“But before that it was the ten commandments (bare feet).” Swain's father was a labourer—a man she called a beacon. Her mother was a housewife before she went blind when Swain was eight. Then the burden of running the household fell on to her and her sister Irene.
There were days when, while attending St Joseph's Convent, Swain didn’t have lunch to eat and she would spend the lunch hour walking around the school spinning stories to the younger students about the cocoa estate which they thought somehow, belonged to her father.
Her teachers, especially John Homer and his wife Pearlie, saw her potential and pushed her into excellence.Swain eventually emerged as the first person from North Oropouche RC School to win a College Exhibition Scholarship. But even as a student of St Joseph’s Convent, she remained in poverty.
“Sometimes I used to exchange my bus tickets for money.“I had to pay 15 cents to travel from Vega de Oropouche to Sangre Grande. Sometimes I didn’t have money and the drivers would say I don’t have to pay them just be nice to them.“I may have been justified to do just that given my situation, but even though I was hungry and poor it never occurred to me that that was the right thing to do."
Swain was forced to transfer out of St Joseph’s Convent when Rheumatoid arthritis had her hospitalised and kept her away from school for several weeks.She eventually transferred to North Eastern College and graduated with seven passes in 1965. “I remember that day well. I cried tears of joy and it was all because of the support of my god parents and my sister Sarah Daniel."
The mother of three, now married to Englishman Bruce Swain, started giving lessons quite by accident a little more than three years ago.“A neighbour asked me to help her son with his school work and soon word got around about what I was doing, and more children started coming.”
Now the children are like family and she, like a busy mother hen, occasionally serves them juice and snacks before sessions start.
“They come into the house and they know they have to settle down. Before starting they go to Bruce and say hello to him and chat for a while, or they may ask if I need help.”
Swain’s only challenge is that the chairs her students sit on are worn.“We definitely need new chairs, and whatever else we could get. If I have to ask for anything though, it would be new chairs.”
When her teaching sessions are over, the children hold hands and an ecumenical prayer is said by a volunteer student each day before they are dismissed.
“There is good in every child. They just need to be encouraged and listened to."“Children have their own problems just like adults do and all they want you to do is to listen to them. And they know that I am here for that.”She feels touched, she said, when she meets grown men and women she taught as children and they are doing well.
The author of the newly released children’s book "Caribbean Sunshine: for Mammie’s Children", Swain’s job is time-consuming given that she has her own responsibilities. Still, she believes that every ounce of energy, and her time spent on the children is well worth it.“My constant prayer is, ‘Lord make me an instrument of your peace and a channel of your blessing, not a repository.’”
