Grace Chew’s Blog

19/2/2009: Day 8, Kapuna Hospital

This whole week Ruth and I have been giving
keyboard lessons to some of the staff and their
children. They’ve actually been getting recorder
lessons from Dr. Valerie (who’s teaching herself
to play recorder and keyboard!) and are pretty
good! Ruth and I started off with high
expectations because of that fact, and also
because they seemed to pick things up fast, but
they’re used to learning things by rote (sounds
familiar… ;P) so getting them to understand the
theory of things has proven quite difficult.
They’re okay with treble clef notes (thanks to
their recorder experience) but are clueless about
bass clef! So we’ve scaled things back and are
taking things one step at a time now. The lessons
have also transformed into two classes, Ruth
taking the older ones and me taking the younger
ones (and their school teacher!). The early
enthusiasm they had for wanting to learn the
keyboard seems to have worn off since we’ve
started teaching everyday and giving them things
of substance to learn and remember, but they’re
bright kids and we’ll get there in the end.

The people here are actually very musical! They
readily and regularly harmonise when singing
songs and hymns, getting most if not all notes in
tune, and are not shy in singing out, which makes
listening to them very enjoyable. A whole group
of men have taught themselves to play the guitar
and now compose songs in their various languages.
When I first heard them play for Sunday worship
they sounded really professional (although tuning was a tad off).

Then there’s this guy who likes to think of
himself as the musical man. I think he started
off playing the guitar, and wanted to learn the
keyboard, so asked God to give him the ability.
And in a few days, he could play the keyboard! I
wouldn’t really have guessed he was self-taught
at first listen, then I realised that he plays
keyboard like a guitar – all chords and no
individual notes. Yet he manages to hold it
together to play for Sunday worship. And after a
few days in Ruth’s class, he developed some
note-playing skills, although still not fully
comprehending the theory behind things, and could
play “Twinkle twinkle little star” with left-hand
chord accompaniment, and play little decorative
runs on the right hand. He’s also got a little
piece he plays on the recorder that sounds like
he were a lone piper on a cliff in Scotland or Ireland.

So there’s definitely raw and untapped talent
here. Just needs a bit of coaching and
instruments, which are unfortunately in short
supply. What Ruth and I can do is small, but
hopefully will set them on the road to making wonderful music!