Kees Bruggink in Réunion island 2008
Septembre 24th to 30th
Kees Bruggink and his wife Will arrived at La Réunion the 24th of september, a wednesday, in the morning
(after a difficult connection at Paris : a sudden strike delayed them so much that they arrived at Orly airport 15
minutes before takeoff !...).
The first day was a full one. After a first discovery of our food (the best of the world, of course), they went to
the secondary school where I teach, in Sainte-Marie. Kees had indeed agreed to show some shodô. The audience
formed by teachers and pupils (most of them studying nihongo) was attentive, even during the embu that
followed, made of shintô ryû kenjutsu, iaidô, aikidô and shintô musô ryû jôdô. After that, there was barely enough
time to go to our dôjô for the beginning of our training course, a “big one” : 22 hours distributed over 6 days.
What was on the menu ? Uchikomi and kihon tandoku till friday ; kihon sôtai and omote on saturday ; then, on sunday, under a shinning sun, we tried to improve our chûdan for one group (Jean and myself), the kihon sôtai for the others ; the last day, we worked hard on omote for the “beginners I”, on ran-ai ôdachi and kodachi for “beginners II”, finishing by a short embu (Kees and Will performing some kata of kage and okuden).
During spare time, we tried to offer our guests some
interesting glimpses of our island : the heights of the west (at piton
Maïdo where one has a wonderful view over cirque de Mafate), a
drive to the Piton de la Fournaise (our volcano), some shopping.
As for me, I’ve been lucky to receive a lot during the numerous conversations with Kees and Will (who
played a major part in the teaching). I did appreciate the human qualities of this Human Being, the worth of his
teaching and of his technical skills. After Sergio Dieci, Vincent Zahnd and Gilles Tache (without forgetting all the
work of Jaff Raji who comes to Reunion island for nearly 20 years), another Grand Monsieur of budô came to
our island, unnoticed by most ;o) but not by us who enjoyed it very much.
Frédéric Payet
Fédération Européenne de Jodo / European Jodo Federation