Barreras de entrada a las empresas establecidas por el RESOFO

“Miss il est amoureux de vous”, Stevie’s friend blurts out to me to tell me that Stevie is in love with me! The children are then queuing up to go practice singing the National Anthem for the flag raising ceremony which will be held on the 11th March 2014, on the occasion of Mauritius’ 46th Independence anniversary. I turn around to look at Stevie, who is standing beside his friend and who looks at me, grinning mischievously. Mischief is an understatement when it comes to describing Stevie. Many would call him naughty at school. Stevie is eight years old. Born in January 2006 and of approximately 80cm in height, Stevie is amongst the shortest boys in the class, but undeniably one of the loudest. He is also agile and often jumps into cartwheels during break times in the yard or on the steps outside of the classroom.

Stevie has a heart-shaped face. Of fairly dark brown complexion, his eyes are small, round and always twinkling with mischief and naughtiness. He sports a crew cut hair style. Stevie is most of

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the time clad in the school uniform, which comprises mid-length shorts and oversized white shirt. At times, he wears the school tracksuit pants as well as a jacket whose colour is a mixture of dark and cobalt blue and which has white stripes at the edges. Very often, Stevie also has a long chain with a symbol of the cross of Jesus hung on the front of his shirt, something he wears quite proudly as I often caught him taking it out when it was tucked under his jacket and displaying it on his chest. Stevie also attends the weekly Saturday Catechesis classes that are run in the school. This image of Stevie being one of the loudest, naughtiest and most mischievous boys of the class was certainly not the first impression I gathered of him on the first visit to their class. It was only after a while that I realised that I was actually seated beside him, as I did not recognise my participants at first. Glad to be able to sit so near him, I was on that day extremely worried because although I was seated near him, his voice was so low-pitched I could hardly hear anything. Very often called at the board to write down the names of those who would be talking or to take classmates through the notes written on the board with the help of the ruler, Stevie acted out the responsibilities given to him by Miss Ariana with a lot of seriousness. However, what struck me that day was the fact that whenever Miss Ariana asked him a question, he would respond immediately and almost always with the correct answer. His teacher describes him as a student who “works very well”. Even on that day when I visited his class for the first time, he was asked by the teacher not to read during their chorus reading sessions because his voice was the loudest and the teacher could not check if the others were really reading or miming when he was reading along with them.

As the days passed gradually, Stevie’s demeanour towards me kept undergoing fluid changes. From being extremely polite with me on the first day and hardly talking with me to constantly teasing me by calling me ‘sorsier’37 _{and ‘nene pwint}38_{’, our relationship moulded as I spent more} time with him. When he realised at first that he was being observed, Stevie would often put himself on display for me, making facial grimaces in class, pulling his teeth out to look like a rabbit, taking off his shoe and hopping around or breaking into cartwheels on the steps outside his class during break times. I soon realised that although initially he put on a show to catch my attention, he never sat still in class, whether it was in Miss Ariana’s classes or those of the other teachers. He was always moving around, going to his classmates’ desk to chat or help them with their work. Often,

37 _witch 38 _{Sharp nose}

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he would break into dance steps in the class or start singing or fidget in his chair. He would always have something to keep his hands busy under his desk, whether it was while making a paper crown, a drawing for one of his classmate or me, or while playing with a pair of scissors. He did all these whilst correctly answering questions asked by the teacher.

Stevie looked up a lot to Miss Ariana and this could be seen in the way he interacted with her. Although some of the teachers termed him as being naughty, even violent and nasty, due to the fact that he was always breaking into fights with his classmates, Stevie was very polite and charming with Miss Ariana. Not only did he interact with her, showing more respect than he did with other teachers, he also obeyed everything she asked him to do and did not like being looked down upon by her. However, in Mr Dev’s class, who was his KM teacher, Stevie was unmanageable. Mr Dev did not like him at all and even once when talking to me, mentioned that nothing could be done with such a chap, attributing it to the locality from which Stevie comes and which Mr Dev said was one full of ruffians. Not only was Stevie loud in Mr Dev’s classes but he was unruly, boisterous and cheeky when reprimanded by Mr Dev. In almost all classes, Mr Dev went on a tirade against him and his bad manners, although recognising that he was very sharp. This made Mr Dev all the more antagonistic towards him as he felt that Stevie was cocky due to his intelligence.

Stevie gave me quite a tough time before I could manage to produce data with him as he would constantly switch on and off the recorder, with me coming back home with ten stretches of audio- recording instead of a single one due to the fact that he had switched it on and off ten times. But once I managed to refine my data production techniques, I produced very rich data with him. As I said, I became like his playmate and he did not hesitate to tease me like he teased his classmates, going under the desk and pulling off my shoes and pinching my ankles, hiding my recorder, pinching my cheeks, fist fighting with me and giving me all kinds of nicknames. He relished teasing me and making his classmates laugh at his antics towards me.

Once in a conversation, he just pulled off his shoe and showed me how his sole was torn. I found it quite strange how he turned it all in a joke and laughed at it. Indeed, I had already known that Stevie came from a very difficult environment, having been told by his teacher – whom I had interviewed – that both his parents were unemployed and that his mother often got beaten by his drunk father. In fact, once in a conversation, Stevie related me an anecdote how his father in a drunken state had peed at his front door’s entrance, and how he had recently discovered that he

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had an elder step sister who was much older than him. Stevie often complained of his bread as most of the time it contained butter and he would usually ask his classmates for a piece of burger which he would put in his bread to eat. As I said, although often rebuked for the excess of energy he possessed as well as for the signs of violence he displayed, the image of Stevie that stayed with me even after having stepped out of the field was that of this dark-complexioned mischievous short boy with his cackling laughter, pulling off the shorts of his friend Jonathan, the poorest boy in the class, whilst they were playing. But I also recall the image of that loyal friend who would dare to stand up for Jonathan when the other boys would laugh at him for the skin problems he had, due to his poverty-stricken condition.

I never got the opportunity to “interview” Stevie as such although we chatted a lot, the proof being data produced together by both him and I. We bantered, or I should say, he bantered a lot with me, sharing titbits of information about anything that would come up in his own world as a child, and I participated in all the conversations that he started, at times joking or playing with him, at times teasing him and at times even arguing mockingly with him. I wondered a lot about Stevie as a growing child, and why he behaved so well with Ariana; or why he was so boisterous in Mr Dev’s class despite the numerous scoldings he got from him. I also have not been able to enquire in a more in-depth manner into his family background, keeping in mind that he was a child and ensuring to protect his anonymity. Hence, although I was aware he came from a family with a number of “issues”, notably the unemployment of his parents, the violence and alcoholism of his dad, these were issues I never really tried to dig into it. I only relied on the anecdotes he counted to me about his home and his family, and which have been interwoven in this text in an attempt to share my own story of my encounter with Stevie and how he was perceived by me, the researcher, and the other teachers with whom he worked.