Sunday, December 13, 2009

VACATION!

I'm headed home today for a month of relaxation and spending time with family and friends ... and of course enjoying all the comforts of home. I'm not sure what I'll do first when I get to the Miami airport. Will I stop for a Starbucks peppermint latte, or a mojito, or french fries, or a salad or ice cream ... or all of the above?

The last week has been hectic but fun. Our last day of school was supposed to be Thursday, and then the Christmas party would be Friday before the kids all headed home for the vacation. But ... I guess you can do this in Haiti ... on Monday the director decided to just move everything forward a day so that the volunteers could get out of town early on Friday for a weekend in the mountains. Guess who cheered louder at that announcements, the adults or the kids?? We then left "laplen" (the valley) on Friday afternoon and drove the three hours up to Belo, which is at about 6000 ft. in the mountains to the south. One of the board members has a house there and he invited us to come up and spend some time together away from school before heading home. It was delightful. It's "cold" there in the mountains - it was around 60 when we went to bed - and I used a blanket for the first time since I've been here. But seriously, it felt SO COLD. (I'm a little afraid that it's 25 in Boston right now ...) We had time for some good long walks and long talks while roasting marshmallows and sipping rum.

Now my bags are packed and I'm trying to figure out how to dress for travel from Port au Prince to Boston in December. FLip flops? Hoodie? I just home the family remembers to bring me a jacket at the airport!

jwaye noel tout moun!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Franklin

A few people have asked this week ... so I wanted to let you know that Franklin was released yesterday and came home at about 5 pm last night. He looks great, was smiling and joking like always, and joked that the prison was crazy and "I wish you could all see it." To which everyone responded - no thanks. That was a long two weeks.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Advent



Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I always love this season because I love Christmas, and the anticipation of Christmas, and the music we sing during this time of year is just so much fun. This year though that anticipation has a whole new meaning for those of us who are really just dying to come home for a month to see family and friends, sleep in our own beds, curl up under a blanket and read a book on a snowy day, eat our favorite foods that do not involve rice or pasta and enjoy a nice merlot with dinner. Two weeks until I come home … more than four weeks until Christmas …

But I’m trying to keep my head in the game here and enjoy the things that are wonderful about being here. We had my absolute favorite lunch today – diri ak sos pwa (rice with bean sauce and other yumminess). This morning I went outside and there was one of our security guys up in a coconut tree throwing them down to the ground where someone else chopped them open for a little midmorning snack of coconut milk and the fleshy stuff inside. It’s mango season finally and they’re insanely delicious. Yesterday we spent a day at a fancy hotel and sat out by the pool all afternoon. We had cheeseburgers and fries for lunch! The weather is absolutely gorgeous now and I get to wear flip flops every day. I did yoga outside this morning about 6:15 before breakfast. The kids here really do crack me up every day. Their favorite game now is saying “yo gusto” to me because that’s about the most grammatically incorrect thing you can say in Spanish and I told them it makes me cry when I hear it. Now they just think that’s funny and say it to me as often as possible to watch me scream and run away.

Life is good here – but I can’t wait to be home for a while!

Turkey Day





Thanksgiving was wonderful. It was also my birthday, which made it extra special. In the morning at the daily school meeting, all 358 kids sang happy birthday to me in 4 languages. That was a pretty good start to the day! There were about 15 visitors from the United States here for the week, so we planned an incredible meal for them, the 9 volunteers, the 6 Moynihans, and about 20 of the staff members who live at the school. We had class that day, so the cooking happened in 2 kitchens all day long, and as people ran in and out to go to class, we’d basically tag team each other in and out of the cooking. The baking started at 9 and we sat down to eat at about 7:30 and throughout the cooking process we listened to Christmas music! At various points we didn’t have water in our kitchen and had to get water from one of the wells, and the electricity was out for a while too. These things are pretty normal around here, but definitely added a certain challenge to our Thanksgiving dinner prep!

Our menu included …
Sweet potato casserole
Green bean casserole
Garlic mashed potatoes
A salad with cashews, raisins, and so many tasty fresh veggies.
A fruit salad with mangos and bananas
Stuffing (from a bag … but who cares?)
Freshly baked dinner rolls
Turkey and gravy
A GIANT pot of rice and beans
Apple Crisp
Peach cobbler
Pumpkin Pie
Sweet Potato Toffee Pie – so delicious I almost died.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Cake
Whipped cream
Freshly squeezed Grenadien juice (maybe it’s guava? I’m not sure but I love it.)
Ice cold Coke.

It was wonderful. We had enough food for everyone to have seconds of dinner AND dessert (which is an amazing accomplishment around here.) We sat outside at 5 big tables and miraculously, there weren’t even any mosquitoes that night. The most surprising thing that we all kept commenting on was how much it really tasted like Thanksgiving … not a cheap imitation, but the real thing. Even the dessert leftovers that we enjoyed the next day tasted like the real thing. It was wonderful to share this favorite American tradition with so many other people – and to enjoy so many tastes of home!

Something I never knew I was thankful for

Weds. November 18 was a big national holiday here. It’s the anniversary of the last battle of the Haitian Revolution in 1803, when the last French ships finally sailed away after a brutal, long battle at the last fortress on the north coast. After our morning assembly in which kids did dramatic readings of Jean Jacques Dessalines’ pronouncement on that day, and sang a few extra patriotic songs, Mr. Hubert, the principal, quietly informed the staff of an unfortunate incident which had taken place the night before. Franklin, a recent LCS graduate and current staff member, was studying in his university library while some student protests were going on outside. University students protesting their situation is practically a daily occurrence here, but this one had special significance because it was on the holiday … and because in their exuberance they lit a few cars on fire. One of these cars happened to belong to a high ranking government official. Well … the police sprung into action to catch the perpetrators of the violence, and when they couldn’t find them, they just swept into the library and arrested the first 13 people they saw. Franklin was one of them.

When I first heard about this, I honestly thought it was kind of comical. Franklin is one of the sweetest, gentlest, actually most socially awkward people I’ve met here. He’s also brilliant and speaks English better than I do. But the thought of him getting caught up in something like that was just so absurd. I just assumed they’d sort it all out and he’d have a funny story to tell tomorrow. Then I looked in the faces of the Haitian people around me and realized that this was no joke. At all. There was true fear in their eyes. I came at this situation from an “innocent until proven guilty” mindset, and that’s not how criminal justice works here. I assumed that given the total lack of evidence connecting him to any crime, that they wouldn’t even be able to charge him and keep him in custody. Well, here they don’t really need evidence to keep someone in custody, and people sit in jail for months and years awaiting trials. They were confident that he would be OK as long as he stayed in the city jail, but if he was transferred to the prison … no one ever really finished that sentence, but they didn’t need to. I knew what they were afraid of. Franklin the bookworm who frequently talks to himself because honestly, he loves the sound of his own voice … in a Haitian prison. It really was terrifying.

Of course the people who run this place mobilized immediately to plead the case of not only Franklin, but the other 13 students and faculty members who were arrested with him. People in jails here don’t get food (or actually, they have to pay for it) so families and friends have to bring food. So people here started making 14 sandwiches every day to bring over there. They did all the work that a court appointed lawyer would have done ... if there was such a thing as a court appointed lawyers here. After three days, our fears were realized when the students were transferred to the prison. And then the weekend came, and there would be no further action on their case until Monday. The case had become a political football. The cops couldn’t admit they had screwed up, the government minister whose car had been burned was furious, and no one wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole. If they let them all go, they’d look weak. Someone had to pay for the violence … but there is literally ZERO evidence connecting any of them with the crimes.

This past week it has become clear that the authorities will have to release them, but not without trying to make themselves look good first. They’ve heard each person’s case separately, and released the least likely suspects first (a professor, 2 women, a library staff member – who’s also an LCS graduate.) There are four still in prison, and Franklin is one of them. /The “good” news is that the police treatment of all of them has been excellent. Families and friends have been allowed easy access to them. They have been held separately from the rest of the prison population, and by Franklin’s description and still positive attitude, they have not been mistreated. It’s Friday night and people are confident that Franklin and the others will be released Monday or Tuesday … after another weekend in prison.

I just had no idea how totally naïve I was about “justice” in the developing world. Evidently this is quite common in many parts of the world – that prisoners can be held without charge or evidence, and that dehumanizing violence inside prisons is the norm. I know that the American criminal justice system has problems, and that innocent people sometimes go to jail, and that many poor people do not trust the system at all. But I also happened to read last week about student protests at the University of California in which many people were arrested for occupying a University building. The line that caught my attention was about a woman who was arrested, charged and released, “to await her trial in 60 days.” We US Americans are lucky people. Franklin’s been awaiting his day in court in prison for the last 10 days. Hopefully it will come on Monday or Tuesday.

Food

I’ve written a lot about food since I’ve been here – what we eat, and how we prepare it. I haven’t said much about how we think about food here. I should step back a few years and explain something first … In the last ten years I’ve worked in schools with significant immigrant populations, and where a huge percentage of the students live in poverty (as it is defined in the United States.) I have often been really uncomfortable with the way I see these kids interact with food. Whenever there was a pot luck dinner, I would get so irritated when I would see kids race to the table and fill their plates with no consideration for saving food for anyone else. When there’s ever free food, I would be genuinely embarrassed to have to make kids empty their pockets of the stash they had had taken. I have often said to kids, “come on, you act like you’ve never seen food before and will never see it again. Relax …”

In our first few weeks here we struggled to work out the proportions of how to prepare food for 30 people every day. There were a few days when the last people in line didn’t get much to eat at all, and no one ever got seconds. Given that we didn’t have much control over what we ate, and didn’t have the ability to go out and get our own food if we didn’t like whatever was served, it was hard for us to manage our food intake. We found ourselves getting mad when others took too much food. If someone unexpected showed up to a meal, we’d jealously eye the food on their plate. We would eat really quickly hoping for seconds, and then go get them even if we weren’t totally hungry. When visitors bring a bag of M&M’s, we devour it in about 11 seconds. Now, I need to emphasize that we have enough food here and no one’s wasting away. We don’t often have extra, but we generally have enough. We get three meals a day, and they’re usually good meals. But just that little fear that we might not get as much as we want, or that the next meal might be one that we didn’t love, turned us into some pretty greedy, food hoarders. I finally understand why people who have grown up without an abundance of food around them act kind of crazy at a pot luck buffet because all of us volunteers have watched ourselves demonstrate some of those same unflattering behaviors in the past few months. When you can’t have as much of whatever you want, whenever you want it, things get complicated. I really never understood that before.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Reverse Harvest


Thanksgiving is coming up soon … I LOVE Thanksgiving! I always remember loving Thanksgiving, and not just because my birthday always falls on or around the 4th Thursday in November. I love that Thanksgiving is about three of my favorite things – food, my family, and organized team sports. There’s no big drama around gifts or parties or fancy outfits or spending money (well, except the money we spend on the feast!) Maybe I would feel less relaxed about it all if I was the one in charge of orchestrating said feast, but since I remain just a sous chef in the dinner prep, it’s pretty much just fun for me.

Much to my dismay, Thanksgiving is not observed in Haiti. But since LCS is undeniably a bi-national organization, it IS observed here. We still have school, but in the afternoon there’s a big American football game that the staff play and the kids all watch. And for dinner, we have a feast. Everyone prepares their favorite dish, and we eat our faces off (or so I’m told!) Since my birthday falls exactly on the big day this year, I’m especially looking forward to sharing my own birthday festivities with this Caribbean flavored thanksgiving.

The Haitian Project (the US nonprofit that operates Louverture Cleary School) has an annual activity called the “Reverse Harvest” to encourage US Americans to use Thanksgiving as an opportunity not only to express our gratitude for the many blessings we share, but also to participate in an act of solidarity with those around the world who have so much less. The idea is to spend the day on November 20th fasting, in whatever way is appropriate for you, and in prayerful reflection on the important connection between ourselves and the billions in the world who will not have enough to eat at all on November 20th. Either before the day, or at the end of it, you can then decide on an amount of money that you did NOT spend on food that day, and make a contribution to an organization working to improve the chances of those who are hungry in the world. Obviously I hope you would choose to contribute to Louverture Cleary School, but honestly, if there’s some other organization that’s important to you, make a donation to that organization. Really, we’re all on the same team here.

A few facts about LCS …
It costs 7 dollars a day to feed and educate a student at LCS.
Nothing is wasted here – we get our rice, pasta, sugar, and cleaning supplies donated by Haitian businesses and international aid organizations. Every dollar goes a long way here.
Not only does LCS feed 350 children three healthy meals each day, we continue to feed about 40 children from the neighborhood lunch each day as well.

If you want to participate in the reverse harvest, send an e-mail to development@haitianproject.org to sign up officially. The Haitian Project will send you some readings and reflections as well as ideas about how you might spend the day. Or, just do it on your own. If you are willing and able to make a contribution, you can do it online, but there’s a small fee on the credit card transaction, so it’s actually better to write a check and mail it directly to: The Haitian Project, P.O. Box 6891, Providence, RI 02940

Thank you! I’ll be thinking of all of you – and be thankful for all of you - on my birthday!

Haikus

I love to write Haikus. I just think they’re hilarious - short and sweet and witty. Ever since college I’ve always loved writing haikus as a sort of narration of the funny events in my life and in the lives of my closest community. So, my time in Haiti has been no different. Here are a few stories – and the Haikus that they inspired – that I’ve written and posted on the wall in the past three months …

1. I had this weird looking bug bite on my hand that turned out to be a chigger. Gross. Has anyone ever had chiggers? I guess they’re pretty common in warm climates, even in the south of the United States. They’re these little bugs that literally live under your skin and keep burrowing until they die. The best way to kill them is to put nail polish over the little trail of bites to suffocate the little bastards. After a few weeks of wondering what the hell it was, I tried the nail polish trick, and it worked. But before it was all gone, I composed the following haiku to the Chigger I named Pepe:
A Chigger Haiku:
Dear Pepe, Please will
You stop burrowing under
My skin. Thank you. Bye!

2. Then there was the runaway cow. I mentioned that the school purchases a cow for slaughter about twice a month. Well, this past Friday, he got loose from the place he was tied up on the soccer field. First I saw him running around while the little neighborhood kids played soccer around him. Then they caught him by the rope around his neck and retied him. I, needless to say really, was terrified as this fairly large bull ran around among about 20 small children. They were utterly unbothered. Then later that night – it was a Friday, so the students were gone – as some staff members played a campus wide game of hide and seek, suddenly we saw this huge shape emerge from the soccer field (which has a door, mind you.) Sure enough, the bef was loose again! This time he started running all around the whole campus. And he ran quite a bit faster than I was really comfortable with. A few people tried to catch him – by the tail, by the rope, but nobody could. Finally we just ushered him back to the soccer field and closed the door tightly. You’ll all be glad to know that the cow in question then punished us by crapping ALL OVER the soccer field and playground. But we got the last laugh because we ate him for lunch on Monday.
A Runaway Cow Haiku
Um … guys, where’s the bef?
Holy crap he’s after us!
I’m not scared … are you?

3. Have I mentioned the mosquitos in this place? Ugh. I hate them. Anything that contributes to the death of mosquitos is my friend – even the horrible smelling insecticides we spray all over the place. But the best mosquito killers of all are the little lizards – geccos actually - who crawl around the walls, chirping quietly as they eat the mosquitos for lunch. One night as I watched this joyful ritual, I composed the following haiku:
A love poem
Little lizard friend,
You crawl around eating bugs.
I think I love you.

4. Way back in August, I played one of my favorite community games. I wrote the first two lines of a haiku and left the last line open for people to complete. It was after we had our first experience with Haitian mangos, and with the different methods which Haitians and US Americans use to enjoy the mangoes. Here’s the community Haiku that emerged:
A Mango Haiku
How to eat mangos?
With a knife or with your teeth?
• Both ways require floss.
• Knife? The Haitians glare
• Your face is sticky
• Better have a plan
• Haitians have more fun
• Either or, it’s a chore
• Knife? Here Bolito … Bolito is one of the many dogs who roams this place begging for food and licking himself constantly. No one really likes Bolito.

Los Debates

In my Spanish classes this week I decided to organize an activity that would get ALL of the kids speaking Spanish instead of the usual kids who love to speak and participate all the time. I made a bunch of debate topics about ridiculous things, and each pair of partners chose a topic to debate, and had a class period to prepare a two minute debate. Then the class voted. It was pretty fun. But I had to think hard about debate topics that would be relevant and interesting to the kids here. I thought I’d share the list, since it gives a pretty good clue about what kids here are thinking about:

Which is better …
Bolito vs. Anyan (two of the dogs on campus)
Boys vvs. Girls
Soccer vs. Basketball
Brazil vs. Argentina (the two favorite international soccer teams in Haiti)
Coca Cola vs. Tampico (this horribly sugary “juice” drink that everyone here buys
Incinerator vs. Compost (this one really turned into “which job is worse?” Compost definitely won that debate!)
Mosquitos vs. ants (also became a debate over which was worse)
Haiti vs. United States
French vs. Spanish
Cats vs. Dogs
Toussaint L’Ouverture vs. Jean Jacques Dessalines (two leaders of the Haitian Revolution)
Short people vs. Tall people

It was pretty funny. Some of them are remarkably good debaters, even in their 4th language. They were intended to be 2 minutes each, but today the two girls debating Dogs vs. Cats were so passionate, and the class was full of commentary and counter-arguments, that I think I let it go on for about 10 minutes. Oh well, managing the clock in the classroom never was my forte.

A Menu!

I went out for dinner the other night! It was wonderful. I had mentioned the other day that I really missed being able to CHOOSE what I want to eat, instead of just eating what’s served according to the school schedule. And lucky me, the opportunity arose for a few of use to go out to dinner with a few of the board members who were in town. We went to one of the fancy hotels in town and sat by the pool outside under the stars. The place reminded me of my image of a Graham Greene or Hemingway novel – a mix of local people and foreigners sharing cocktails around wicker tables while impeccably dressed Haitian waiters run around cracking jokes and serving food. The menu wasn’t large, but it had Steak au pauvre on it and that’s what my body was screaming for … PROTEIN. It was delicious. So was the beer and the espresso ice cream we had for dessert. I go out to eat at least twice a week at home, and none of those meals ever tasted as good as this one.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Halloween – Machetes at the Nuncio’s





The night before Halloween we celebrated Samantha’s birthday with a costume party, cake and adult beverages. I wasn’t sure how the whole costume thing would work, since they don’t do costumes on Halloween here at all. But I was delighted to see how everyone rose to the occasion! I was a tap tap – one of those Haitian pick up truck / buses that’s always painted absurdly bright colors and usually has a bible quote written in English. Mr. Hubert, the principal and philosophy teacher for the oldest students, was Nietzsche – hence the serious face, white moustache and “God is Dead” quote. Jon was Route National 3 – so he’s covered in trash and a nice sign that says “don’t throw trash here.” We had a crazed surgeon, a bunny rabbit, an LCS student, a few rappers, a cocktail waitress, and oh yeah … Peter was a square. He wore a square around his neck and pulled his socks and shorts way up, and just generally acted like a big nerd all night. Very clever. We had a great time!

On Saturday we spent the day working at the Papal Nuncio’s residence. The Papal Nuncio is like the Vatican’s ambassador to a country. The Nuncio is responsible for representing the interests of the Vatican to the government, as well as recommending Bishops for appointment and lots of other bureaucratic things. The Nuncio in Haiti right now is a Philippino Bishop who speaks like 7 languages. Of course Patrick Moynihan – who knows everyone – knows him well, so he volunteered the services of about 15 staff members (and of course his own family) to come help with a pretty significant work project at the Nuncio’s residence.

I must first describe this place. It’s in the hills south of Port au Prince and the house has an absolutely stunning view of the plain below – including the city, the airport, the bay and the mountains to the north. It’s strange to see Haiti from above. It’s so quiet and beautiful. You can still hear the muffled sounds of real life below though – horns honking, tap tap’s music blasting, the cheers from a soccer game, children crying, bells ringing to announce the approach of a shoe shiner … but it’s just so peaceful from a distance. The house itself is beautiful. It has this strange mix of European décor with classic art work from Haiti. The chapel reminded me of Italy – full of silver and dark wood – but with angels made of metal on the walls that are clearly made in Haiti.

Our work project involved clearing small trees from a back hill slope as well as trees on the front of the property. With the help of some of the staff from the house, we cut down trees, chopped them into manageable sized pieces, and fed what we could through a chipper to create mulch to spread on the newly cleared areas. It was hard work – but so satisfying to watch this enormous pile of tree parts that was taller than any of us get smaller and smaller as the wood chipper did its thing. My machete wielding muscles are quite sore today however. There are few activities so demanding on the muscles in one’s forearms as chopping with a machete.

Now it’s Sunday and I have exams to grade. 100 of them, to be exact. And grading Spanish exams requires an attention to detail that I’m not really accustomed to – because it sort of matters if you spell something with an e or an a … that’s kind of the whole point. Off I go!

Exams – and sharing



This picture shows how kids here study – they pour over their notebooks trying to memorize everything in them. Frequently that means they walk around in circles murmuring out loud to themselves in order to commit everything to memory. Can you say “kinesthetic learners?”

The kids have been taking exams all week. They have a whole week of exams at the end of each quarter, and their exams count for 50% of their quarter grade. It’s crazy to watch them work on an exam sometimes for three hours, sometimes for 30 minutes and know that this work represents half of their grade for the class. They work so hard during the exam time! There’s no screwing around or joking about “I’m gonna fail …” as my American students unfortunately do sometimes. They just get to work and don’t stop until they’re done. Today I was proctoring exams in a room that’s right on the edge of the property across the street from a place that makes cement blocks. They run some incredibly loud machinery at that place, and by the end of two hours of listening to it, my ears were ringing. But somehow it seemed not to phase the kids at all. It’s like they’re just so used to things being uncomfortable, or having to make do in a bad situation, that they don’t even notice the deafening roar outside. I wish I could be so relaxed about things.

What’s so nice about having a big campus with lots of outside space is that as soon as they’re done, they leave and can go outside and study or run around and play. It’s perfect! Work hard, play hard, then be back in time for the next exam. There’s a two hour lunch / play break in the middle of the exam days! It makes me a little sad to think of the limitations of what we can do with our little school in Cambridge – where releasing the kids for two hours in the middle of the day to blow off steam is not an option. It would be so good for them!

Watching the kids take exams has also made me think more about something I’ve noticed a lot since being here. In general, Haitian people are incredibly generous with what they have, in a way that is frankly kind of embarrassing when I consider how stingy we Americans can be sometimes. If someone comes in to dinner with an avocado, they cut it up and pass the pieces around. If one kid doesn’t have money for a snack, her friend will give her a bite of his snack. It’s like everything is for the community. I asked James about this one day and he said that of course there are plenty of greedy, stingy people in Haiti, but that in general, people see sharing food as “money in the bank.” They know that this time they might be the one with the food, but next time they might be the one without, so it’s best to share now to ensure that others will share next time.

Why did exams make me think about sharing? I watched as 28 kids in the room shared one little white out pen. They just tossed it back and forth around the room, without causing any disruption or drama or without the owner of the white out complaining that everyone was using all of his stuff. I watched kids share calculators, passing them around without talking or complaining, or telling each other to get your own darn calculator. The most amazing moment was when one little kid’s blue pen ran out. He asked me for one, but all I had was black (and for some reason that is utterly inexplicable to me, they are required to write only in blue pen.) He then asked the rest of the kids, but no one had one. So he sat there for a while trying to make the pen work. Then, without even talking, the kid next to him just handed him his pen while he read the next question. The pen-less kid then scribbled down answers until the other kid tapped his arm to give it back. They went back and forth for the next 30 minutes sharing one blue pen to write two exams. I was amazed. This simply would not happen in the United States. We are all accustomed to having what we need when we need it, that we kind of fall apart a little when inconvenienced by loud noises outside an exam room, or having to share our white out, or not having a pen, or having to share the avocado that I bought with my own money with whomever’s sitting at the table. It’s humbling, really.

The many uses of Coca Cola

Aside from providing a sweet, frosty treat at the end of a long, hot day, I have recently discovered two other important uses of the world’s favorite cola. First, we’ve had some recent concerns about our drinking water – not that it’s bacteria ridden, but that we might actually be over treating it with chlorine. It hasn’t been a problem for me personally, but a few other volunteers have been sick on a few recent weekends after the chlorine treatment happens. So, they’re drinking bottled water, boiled water … and coca cola. I don’t know – does it settle the stomach? Does it re-hydrate? Or is it just tasty? Anyway, we’re working on the water situation, and in the meantime, some people are taking precautions and drinking Coke.

Then this morning … we went to our usual Mass with 400 children and families at the Missionaries of Charities in Delmas. We came in two cars, and on the way out, discovered that one driver had left the lights on and the battery on the truck was dead. First we tried pushing it down the hill while she tried starting the ignition – evidently sometimes this works. It didn’t. So we pulled the other car up next to the truck and tried jumping it. But either the cables were bad or something, because it wasn’t working at all. Then as a small crowd of neighbors and people coming out of Mass gathered to watch, a man with a local mechanic shop came over with his tools and just started helping. They tried everything, but nothing worked. The highlight of the efforts included sending a tiny little kid around the corner to buy a coke, then using the coke to clean off the battery acid from the battery so the jumper cables could get a better grip. I think I had heard of this before, but would not really have believed it if I didn’t witness it with my own eyes. This crusty, baked on battery acid just pulled away. It was amazing. And gross. Well, the end of the battery story is that it never actually worked. We ended up taking the good battery out of the car that worked, putting it in the truck to start it, then taking it out and putting it back in the other car to start it … then putting the bad battery in one of the already running cars for it to charge. Is that freaking brilliant or what? Who needs AAA?

Parli Italiano?

Early in the school year I mentioned to some kids that I speak Italian. Or more accurately, there was a time in my life when I spoke Italian quite well and I can probably still sort of fake it. 2 kids asked me if I would teach them Italian and I agreed. My brother brought my old Italian book from home down to Virginia when I was there for Bobby’s wedding, and so last week I announced to all 350 kids that anyone who wanted to learn some Italian could come during play hour on Tuesday. Now, I need to explain that play hour is a sacred ting here. School ends at 3:30, then kids work / clean until about 4:30 or sometimes 5. Play hour is 4:30 – 5:30 before dinner and evening study hours. During play hour there is a soccer game on every square inch of flat ground. There is a card game or dominoes game on every table. It is one moment in kids’ days here that is utterly unscheduled and belongs entirely to themselves. But despite all this, the night of my first Italian club meeting, I had a bout 25 kids show up.

They all brought their little notebooks – because learning in this culture = what you write in your notebook. But they’re so incredibly good orally. They listened and repeated and when I corrected their “too French” or “too Spanish” accents on certain words, they fixed them – perfectly. They approach language the way I do. They wanted some rules and frameworks to organize it all, but mostly they just wanted to call out the things they wanted to learn and have me say them and write them for them to repeat and write in their notebooks. They’re so scary good at memorizing things that a few days later lots of them still remember what I taught them and they’re greeting me with “buona sera” and announcing “ho fame!” in the middle of Spanish class. I really can’t believe I’ve stumbled into a culture of people who are as completely obsessed and nerdy about language as I am! I also can’t believe I have an excuse to study my Italian again … in Haiti. Who woulda thunk?

Trash progress

Route National 3 Trash update … we have completely cleaned both sides of the road for about 7 streets, and are working on the last two streets in the opposite direction from school. At Santo 3, the site of one of the ugliest piles which is now completely clean, the local government put up a sign that says “Santo 3 is not a place for dumping trash. Blah blah blah … you will be arrested and fined if caught dumping trash here.” So wow, somebody noticed. Now the question is whether or not the local law enforcement has the ability to actually enforce this new rule. We shall see …

Down on the other end of the road, at Santo 9, is the latest and grossest pile that we’re working on. It’s actually more of a cesspool than a pile. And there’s been so much rain lately that it’s lots of trash swimming in a sea of … water. They were out working on a big hole to start burying the trash in when a man came over and explained first in Kreyol, then in perfect American English that he owns the property and is working on fixing the drainage and getting the city to come over and pick up the trash so he can fix the drainage. Corey asked him when this was happening … soon or in January. He answered, “I know, I’m not waiting for this bullshit country to do anything … I’m meeting with them this week.” Again … we shall see.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Lasagna twa kwizin

Tonight was one of those awesome “this doesn’t happen in my normal life” experiences. It was a crazy day. Class in the morning, helping with the little kids’ meal program and play time around 2 pm, then cleanup hour with 24 LCS kids from 3:30 to 5, then it was time to start making dinner. Monday night is lasagna night, and my cooking team and I have a lasagna factory that’s a pretty well oiled machine. But we were getting a late start, and I knew the water would take forever to boil on our little stove top, so I knew we would never have dinner on the table by six. Then we discovered that we didn’t have any gas for the stove in our kitchen. Normally we’d just use the school cafeteria kitchen in that situation, but there’s actually no stove in there. Everything they make for the kids is made on burners in giant pots. So …. We prepped the sauce in our kitchen. Boiled the water for the pasta in the Moynihans’ kitchen across the street, made the sauce in the school kitchen (because the stove at the Moynihans wouldn’t be big enough for two big pots of water and a big pot for making sauce.) One person watched the water and cooked the pasta while three others made the sauce. Then we walked it all across the street to put it all together and bake in the Moynihans’ oven. In the end we were only thirty minutes late and 30 people enjoyed 4 lasagnas and a side of leftover rice from Saturday. Three Kitchen Lasagna was an unexpected success.

A dirty problem




I find myself thinking about trash a lot here. At home I sometimes marvel at how much trash I could produce in a week, but then I’d just put out the barrels and the recycling on Tuesday morning and by Tuesday afternoon they’d be empty again, ready for me to refill. Where does it all go? I guess it goes to a landfill somewhere, but I have absolutely no idea where, or what it looks like, or who manages it, or what it smells like. I also have no idea how much our system of waste management costs. I guess that’s what property taxes are for … but I really don’t know.

Here, the trash problem is unavoidable. At the school it is a very tightly managed process. Metal, glass, compost and burnable trash are separated. The metal cans need to be crushed with a shovel and thrown with the glass into the metal pit in the corner of the playground where they will stay for … eternity, I guess. The compost is added to the pile, turned every few days, and sifted every few weeks. Everything else – including plastic – is thrown in the incinerator and burned every few days. We’re even working on saving certain types of plastic and metal that can be recycled. Within the school walls, this process works well, and it is rare to find a piece of trash out of place.

Outside the walls of LCS it’s a different story. Trash is everywhere. On the drive from the airport to the school one passes piles and piles of trash on the side of the road. Sometimes the piles are on fire with thick black smoke drifting into the air. In the neighborhood around the school there is trash littering the gardens and yards and roads – from plastic bags to metal cans to plastic bottles. What the heck are people supposed to do with it? I know they burn their own trash near their own homes, but there’s no public sanitation system. There are few public trash cans (and these are only in the city, not in the surrounding towns.) I really can’t figure it out.

We’re working hard with the kids to get them to take a real responsibility for the neighborhood around the school as well as for the school itself. We’ve started taking little groups of kids out in the afternoon during cleanup hour to pick up the trash in the neighborhood and bring it back to the school’s incinerator to burn. The hope is that after it’s clean, we can install some public trash cans, and teach our neighbors to use them, and to bring them into the school to be burned when they’re full. But wow, these first few days of this project have been hard. It reminds me of the most challenging PHA community service day ever. Try to convince a bunch of teenagers to pick up trash with their hands, when they know that these are just a few streets in all of Haiti, and that they will probably just look the same tomorrow. Seriously, it’s like getting PHA kids excited about raking leaves in a Somerville park in October when there are still tons of leaves on the trees overhead. Feels a bit like shouting into the wind. But after a few days, when the kids started to see progress, their attitude started to shift from feet dragging and whiny to cautiously optimistic to genuinely proud of their work. The best part was when the little kids from the neighborhood joined us, because if this is going to work at all, it’s going to be because those same little kids get their parents to use the trash cans instead of just dropping their trash in the street.

Then yesterday we took a small group of the oldest students out of the neighborhood onto the national road nearby. It’s one of the reasonably well paved roads (thanks to the US army corps of engineers back in the 1920’s) but it is lined with piles of trash up to the ankles. We went out with shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, buckets, some diesel fuel and matches. For two hours kids, teachers, staff, and volunteers raked the trash into piles, pulled out and crushed the metal cans, and lit the piles on fire. I know, it’s gross. Burning plastic is dangerous and the fumes were kind of gross. But like I said, what else are people supposed to do? And maybe it is just a few streets in all of Haiti, but I guess we have to start somewhere.

Study Hours

I love watching these kids work during study hours each night. They know how to study in a way that I only dream that my American students would. They don’t just “do homework” to get it done. They study. They crowd around each other’s notebooks reviewing the day’s notes. They walk around outside reading their notes out loud to themselves. They sit alone in little corners quietly reading. And they do it with minimal adult supervision. There are adults on duty during study hours, but we’re just there to answer questions, and occasionally manage the noise level or wake up a sleepy student. But they just seem to understand that success in class requires significant work outside of class. Of course the work that they’re asked to do here is much more about memorization and regurgitation than the work that we generally ask of our kids in the States. But somehow in our efforts to structure everything so much, and hold kids accountable for every little thing, we’ve taught them that they only have to do exactly what we tell them to do, and if it’s not going to be “checked” the next day, then there must not be any work to do. I don’t have any brilliant insights on this one yet, but I’m working on it.

On the other hand … I wish the kids here had half of the critical thinking skills that my PHA kids have. In class the kids here are so good at copying notes and doing concrete tasks, but struggle so much to think outside the box or ask original questions. It’s not that they’re not capable, but they haven’t been asked to do so often enough. The oldest kids are better, because they’ve had many years of American teachers, but the younger ones’ heads explode a little when you ask them to do something that doesn’t have a right answer. Many seem scared to speak up in class for fear of being wrong or being laughed at by their peers (which happens all the time and makes me CRAZY!) I sort of miss the kids who will just say whatever they’re thinking, or play devil’s advocate or passionately defend an unpopular opinion. I guess that’s why I’m here. We’ll see if I can make any progress on that this year.

Names

The names around here are killing me. KILLING me. There are 350 kids in the school, and I teach 200 of them. But I only see each class 1 or 2 or 3 days each week, so I am struggling to learn their names. Add to that the complication that some people here go by their first names, others go by their last names, and others go by nicknames formed by combining the first few letters of their first and last names. And add to that the complication that I’m terrible at learning kids’ names anyway. And add to that the complication that all of these kids are Haitian. I’m accustomed to having about 10 Haitian kids in a class, and 7 Latino kids and 6 White kids. That makes the odds that I’m going to guess a name right a LOT better for me. I know, I know, it sounds like I’m saying all the black kids look alike. I’m not and they don’t. I’m sure I would be having the same challenge in a classroom full of 25 white kids with the same hair color. Oh, and did I mention that they’re all wearing uniforms? That really doesn’t help. It’s getting to the point that it’s kind of awkward for me to keep asking their names, since it’s probably the 7th time I’ve asked each one his or her name. Maybe by Christmas …?

Target

It was so good to be in the United States last weekend! I indulged in 4 Starbucks iced lattes in four days, ate more meat in those days than I’ve had in the past seven weeks, and of course spent more money in seven hours than I have in those seven weeks. Specifically, I spent 20 dollars on food on the plane and in JFK airport (but it was a REALLY good salad …) That’s almost as much as I’ve spent on laundry, peanut butter, cokes and cookies in Haiti since August 9. The strangest part though was Target. I love that place. I haven’t been gone long enough to have forgotten what it’s like to be in a Target store. But what was a little shocking to me was how after about 17 seconds there, I so quickly fell back into my old “shopping = entertainment” mindset. I just sort of wanted everything I laid eyes on. I found myself wishing I was going back to a cool climate just so I had an excuse to buy a cute jacket, and dreaming of an apartment in Somerville to decorate. I haven’t thought about that stuff in so long … but 17 seconds in Target was all it took. There’s certainly nothing wrong with all of that per se, but it’s been sort of nice to not always be thinking about what else I “need” all the time. Turns out I really don’t need much – but wow, those iced lattes were delicious ….

Bobby and Lauren’s wedding was delightful of course. They have a remarkably mature sense of style for being 23 years old. Their wedding perfectly fit their personalities, and their priorities and their tastes. Aside from the red shoes and the wonderful centerpieces and the tasty food, the best thing to me was their decision to forgo the traditional wedding favors in order to make a contribution to Louverture Cleary School instead. I put out some brochures about the school – and of course some donation envelopes – and lots of people took them. Who knows how many will be returned with checks inside, but I just appreciated the opportunity to invite people to think a bit more globally than we usually do at a wedding. And like I said, it was all just SO delightfully Bobby and Lauren.

Check out some pictures in my Picassa album!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Off to Virginia!

I leave on Thursday morning for my brother Bobby’s wedding in Virginia. I’m so excited to see everyone and to enjoy a weekend of relative luxury. I’ve already planned my first meal when I arrive at JFK Thursday afternoon … an iced coffee and a salad with chicken on it. I can’t wait! Then on to Virginia Beach for wedding festivities and a shopping trip to Target. I realized that my red strappy sundress will absolutely need a little sweater on top of it since I have some fairly ridiculous sunburn lines on my neck and arms. And my always exposed toes are crying for a pedicure. And before flying back here, I’ll pick up all kinds of essentials (and some treats!) to bring back to the volunteers. I figure they’ll probably end up covering my classes while I’m gone, so I may as well make it worth their while! All this and a WEDDING too? What a great weekend!

A Three Shower Day

I had one of those days today where I did nothing that I thought I’d do, but didn’t waste a single minute. I guess that’s an experience lots of people can relate to, but the particular nature of my weird Saturday will especially resonate with people who have spent any time in the developing world. My plan for the day was to get lots of schoolwork done, read a little, go for a run (around the soccer field) and make dinner. A good plan for a Saturday in Haiti.

I woke up at 6:45 and was pretty delighted that I had managed to sleep in. It’s hard to do that here usually. I gathered up my laundry, the soap, some bleach and my hundred Goudes (about $2.50) to pay the lady who would wash my clothes. After my first attempt at washing my own clothes a few weeks ago I gave up in favor of the ladies who can do it about a hundred times better and faster than I can. Anyway … breakfast was at about 7:15 and we had my favorite tasty, absurdly sweet oatmeal. Yum. After breakfast I caught about 15 minutes of Internet time, then decided to go out to the back basketball court to run and work out a little. In the early morning sun (about 8:15) I can last running for about ten minutes. Then I pretty much die so I seek shade and do whatever new exercises I can think of using a resistance band and playground equipment. I’m getting pretty good at it! After my thirty minutes, I took shower number one. Those are the showers when I love not having hot water! So far, that’s exactly what I planned to do today.

At 9:15 we had a volunteer meeting that lasted until about 10:30. The fun part of that meeting was passing around the bag of Snickers that one of the board members had brought from the states! It’s totally normal to lick the wrappers of bite sized Snickers bars, right? Anyway, when that meeting broke up is when my day got weird. Since one volunteer wasn’t feeling very well, I told her I’d take care of her turn at the compost pile. I’ve been here six weeks and somehow have never had to deal with the incinerator or the compost, so I decided it was my turn.

Maybe you have a little compost bucket in your kitchen or backyard, and if you do, I think that’s awesome. I hope to do the same when I return to the States. But wow, the compost pile for the food remains of 400 people who eat three meals a day here … now that’s really something. It’s in two side by side concrete enclosures that are about 6 feet by six feet each, and when we started shoveling it, the pile was well over 18 inches deep at some spots. The task is to move the whole pile from one side of the pit to the other side so that the contents mix up which speeds up decomposition. Today we had the added bonus of sifting the compost which means that every shovel full gets put onto a wooden sifter with a mesh bottom. Two people then shake the sifter back and forth over a wheelbarrow to loosen any of the good soil that has formed, and then toss the remaining compost contents onto the new pile. Aside from being physically demanding work for Peter and me, and aside form the fact that it was in the 11 am sun, the most unpleasant part was that it smelled very strongly like baby vomit. Well, at first it smelled like baby vomit, but as we got to the bottom of the pile where the material was more dense and wet, it started to pretty much just smell like shit. And my other favorite part was that as we shook the sifter over the wheelbarrow, pieces of wet dirt and whatever else fell through the mesh landed all over my feet. Tasty.

After about an hour and a half we were done and spread the disappointingly small amount of dirt around one of the gardens. We put away the tools and I looked down at myself … and decided that the next part of my day would be dedicated to washing all of the clothes and shoes I was wearing. Too bad my laundry lady was already done with the rest of my clothes! Shower number 2 then took place at about 12:15, and even though I was physically clean at that point, I just couldn’t get the faint smell and taste of baby vomit out of the back of my throat for hours. Lunch however – chicken avocado salad - was delicious. And my sneakers are now better looking than they were when I got here!

I spent the next 2 hours washing my clothes and scrubbing my sneakers with a toothbrush and rinsing them in copious amounts of bleach and detergent. This task really shouldn’t take 2 hours, but I’m incredibly bad at it, so it did. Another afternoon meeting, followed by dinner prep which included a near catastrophe in the making of rice for 25 people, followed by Mass and a delicious dinner then led to my third unexpected shower.

During dinner, it started pouring. POURING. Rain here is serious business – it comes on fast and strong. As I took my first few bites of the very tasty dinner we had made, I heard the first sprinkles and ran outside with a flashlight to collect all of my clothes off the lines outside. I managed to rescue most of it before the real downpours, but by the time I made it back inside and sat down again, I was pretty wet. As we ate and listened to the pouring rain and thunder, the roof overhead started to leak a bit. Since I was already soaked, I didn’t really care that there was water dripping on my head, so I just kept on eating. It was a nice little pseudo-shower. Finally, after dinner I headed upstairs to put away my laundry and do some writing … when I remembered it was my turn to clean the bathrooms. Damn. So now, it’s about ten and I might go enjoy shower number 4 before going to sleep. So much for my plans for the day. I guess the schoolwork will have to wait until tomorrow?!

RIP – Bef la



Last Friday I walked out to the soccer field to play with the little kids from the neighborhood and there in the corner was a cow. At first I thought that somehow a cow had wandered onto the property, but one of the LCS students assured me that this was totally normal. Every few weeks, the school buys a cow, slaughters it, and all 400 of us eat if for lunch. Okay. So as the bef wandered the field chewing on grass, the kids played soccer around him and I cracked jokes about whose team he was on and why no one was passing the ball to him. That weekend we found out that the cow would be slaughtered on Monday morning, and a few curious volunteers planned to be up in time to watch. I decided I’d watch from a distance, but I wanted to get a picture of our friend the cow before he met his demise. So, I wandered out to the soccer field at about 5:45 am … bummer … too late. There he was bleeding out between the two goalposts, as a man who had covered himself in the ash from the incinerator (to keep off the blood splatter) began to butcher him. That afternoon when the neighborhood kids came for lunch and to play, I asked them where our friend the cow was, and why he wasn’t going to play soccer with us again. “nou te maje li!” they happily shouted. WE ATE HIM! I guess people here have a much greater awareness of where their food comes from than most Americans do.

Elev yon an klas la




I hesitate to write much yet about kids in class because it’s only been a few days, and I know that these are just first impressions. So as school progresses, I know I’ll write more when I know them better as students and as people, but here’s what I see so far.

First of all, these kids look so good in their uniforms. Tuesday morning as I came downstairs and saw them all walking around outside, I just smiled to myself. The boys where dark green pants and light yellow button up shirts, and the girls where the same shirts with green plaid skirts, white socks and black shoes. To be fair, this particular color combination would look pretty terrible on most white people, but these kids look gorgeous in it. They wear their uniforms with a certain pride and care and wouldn’t dream of sitting on the floor or getting their uniform or school shoes dirty. In a country with so much dust and puddles, it amazes me how clean people generally look.

In class on that first day, kids were excited and nervous and chatty with each other, and realized quickly that teaching here will require all of the same kid management skills that I have collected over the years teaching in the states. They want the adult in the room to be in charge, and they very much want to learn, but they’re also kids and will take any chance a teacher gives them to do the things that kids do.

I am incredibly impressed by their Spanish skills. I’m teaching the oldest kids who have had Spanish for three to six years already, and even the youngest of them are quite capable of asking basic questions, expressing simple ideas, and understanding me pretty well. I thought I’d have to review lots of basics with them, but I really don’t think I will. They know what they’re doing … on to the subjunctive! There were moments when I just had to laugh to myself at the sight of ME speaking my second language to a group of Haitian children speaking their fourth language. I’m so accustomed to the mistakes and broken accent of English speakers’ Spanish, but it will take me a while to get used to the grammatical challenges and unique accent of Kreyol speakers’ Spanish. In each class we mostly spoke Spanish, but when kids couldn’t express something clearly in Spanish, they used English, and when they didn’t know how to say it in English, they looked it up in a French dictionary first. And I threw around French and Kreyol when I could to check their understanding. The whole thing blew my mind.

I discovered quickly that my teacher personality seems to work here. A good mix of structure, insistence on listening when other people are speaking, lots of smiles and lots of jokes … by Friday I had more kids listening to each other and raising their hands to participate. But the actual stuff I do in class every day will be wildly different from what I normally do. My reliance on paper and print materials will not work here. I’ll let you know when I figure out how to deal with that.

From Zero to Three Hundred Fifty



Sunday night before school started, we were all ready for the real action to begin. Enough painting and cleaning and planning and talking and adults. We were ready for some kids. Well, Monday morning, there they were … all 350 of them! They arrived mostly by foot and tap tap with their parents. Most were carrying small bags, thin mattresses rolled up, small buckets and backpacks. They ran around greeting each other and stood in little groups all around campus while their parents waited in line to register them. It was the first of many times this week when I’ve smiled to myself with the thought that kids really are just kids – no matter where.

Mr. Hubert, the principal, had told us that there would be a parent meeting in the morning at 9 am on the basketball court. In the back of my mind I wondered where they would all sit, since I had never seen more than about 30 chairs anywhere in the school. At around 10, when the meeting finally started, I had my answer. Who needs to sit? They all just stood and huddled around one of the round cement tables under the big mango tree while Mr. Hubert stood on top of the table and projected his voice so that most of the people could hear him. Of course, that’s exactly what a parent meeting in Haiti would look like!

After the kids got settled in their dorms and cleaned up the campus and played lots of soccer all over every single cement and grass surface in the place and ate dinner, we had a whole school meeting during which, surprise, the kids all stood on the basketball court and whoever was speaking stood on the round table under the mango tree. They heard from the principal, from Patrick (the director of the project) and from 2 board members (one Haitian and one American) who came to be present for the start of school. What I loved was that this meeting wasn’t about rules and logistics. It was about who these kids are expected to be as human beings. They talked about hard work (inside and outside of classrooms), about putting others before themselves, about studying not just for its own sake, but to be better able to serve people around them and the world as a whole. I don’t know, maybe the kids are jaded having heard it all before, but I felt pretty inspired to get to work!

And then the kids dispersed to their dorms, the lights were cut out at 10 pm, and it got eerily quiet again … until Tuesday morning.

The Schedule

Many of you know of my obsession with school schedules. I spent MANY hours this past summer working on the whole PHA high school schedule, and it became something of a Holy Quest for Perfection in School Scheduling. Well, perfect it was not, but it ultimately worked. Why am I mentioning this …? Because I finally got my LCS schedule on the Friday before school started, and it’s sort of fascinating / hilarious to note some of the similarities and differences between school here and school there.

Similarity # 1: The schedule is a source of anxiety and stress and pitched battles over what’s really important in the life of a school.

Similarity # 2: The schedule is never done on time. I’ve watched teachers – especially brand new teachers – practically go insane because they don’t have their class schedule yet for so many years, and this year was no different. Somehow they think that this whole mystery and complexity of teaching will be made magically easier by the piece of paper in their hands that tells them in what order and in what rooms their classes will meet. “How am I supposed to plan my classes if I don’t even know when they meet?” My somewhat jaded response … “ummmm …. It doesn’t actually matter that much. You just think it does.”

Similarity # 3: The schedule includes nasty compromises all over it. At the end of making the PHA schedule this summer, I felt kind of gross for having to compromise on many details that I know aren’t best for kids or teachers, but which were simply unavoidable given the limited resources of minutes, humans, and classrooms. Some of the compromises that the LCS schedule makes, however, would be almost unthinkable to PHA folks. Here are some of my favorites:
1. I have three double blocks in the week. All three have the first period in one room and the second period in a different room.
2. Many teachers see one section three times in one day, two times another day, and that’s their five periods of class for the week.
3. There are classes scheduled to meet outside in the tables y the basketball court. (which makes the old PHA “annex” seem kind of luxurious!)
4. One volunteer just discovered that her section of biology only meets 4 times a week while the other teacher’s section meets five times. It is now up to her to go fight for that last hour.
5. When a teacher is double booked – supposed to teach two classes at once – another teacher is assigned to cover one of the sections. (OK fine, to be fair, that DID happen once in the PHA schedule this year ….)
6. There is absolutely, unequivocally, no such thing as anybody “owning” a classroom. My 16 class periods meet in 5 classrooms.

Some other fascinating things about the way school works here …
1. There are 11 40 minute periods each day. Oh ... and everyone doesn't get a personal copy of their schedule. It's posted on sheets of paper in one location in the school, and the kids have to go and copy it down. And it's also not posted as a weekly grid, but as a list of classes each day. A little harder to follow!
2. Each quarter, there’s a whole week for exams, and students expect a week of review. That leaves about seven weeks of teaching each quarter. This one exam counts for 50% of their grade in each class each quarter.
3. School goes from 7 am to 3:25 pm, and is followed by an hour of school cleanup in which all 350 kids are at least loosely engaged in a work activity
4. Kids are often late for class after their lunch period because about 15 kids in each lunch block are assigned to clean the dishes. I have recently discovered this is also a very common excuse for why kids might be late to class in the period after their lunch ….
5. Every night the kids are required to be in a classroom (or hallway near a classroom) studying from 7:30 to 9:30. I love it! More on that later …
6. Lights are out at 10. And when I say lights out, I’m not kidding. They cut off the generators to the dorms. It gets very quiet all of the sudden!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Want to help?


I appreciate the e-mails and blog comments and especially the actual letters and cards that many of you have sent in the past month. It’s wonderful to know that you’re enjoying my stories, that maybe they’re giving you something different to think about, and that you’re keeping me and the school in your thoughts and prayers. Now as the start of school is a few days away, I thought I’d ask if you are willing and able to make a small financial contribution to Louverture Cleary School in order to help get the year off to the best start possible. This school operates entirely on the generosity of others – who give their time, treasure and talent in different ways. Just last week we received the amazing news that a single donor will be buying the school a new Land Cruiser so that more students can get out into the community to work with the Missionaries of Charity, and so that all of the volunteers can actually go somewhere in one car! Such extraordinary generosity in difficult times is truly remarkable and a wonderful testament to the fact that people who know this school well believe completely in its mission to rebuild Haiti through the education and formation of one child at a time. I don’t expect any multi-thousand dollar contributions, but it doesn’t take much to make a huge impact here. It costs $7 to educate, house and feed a child here each day which means that the annual cost of each child’s education, room and board is less than $1,000. As you’ll read in the next few posts, nothing is wasted here, so you can be sure that any contribution you make will be getting to the people who need it. If you’re interested, please click on the Louverture Cleary School link on the right and click on “make a donation.” If you’d rather write a check, there are instructions on how to do that too. Thanks in advance if you decide to help – either now or at some point in the future.

You wouldn’t think …


It would be hard to give away food to children in a starving country, but it turns out that it was. At lunch each day in the school cafeteria, the cooks dish up HUGE plates of beans and rice and the special sauce of the day. We watched day after day as kids who were at school to work on cleanup and maintenance projects ate about half of their plate, then scrape the rest into a big container. And most of us couldn’t even remotely finish a whole plate! We wondered what was happening with the leftovers. After a while we confirmed that workers were taking those leftovers home to feed their animals. While we all certainly appreciate the animals’ need to eat, it just seemed the height of absurdity that animals were getting our leftovers while there are a hundred children within a half mile radius of the school who don’t get enough to eat every day. We decided to start collecting the leftovers and then inviting the neighborhood children in for a meal. Good idea, right? Well, we made a few critical miscalculations. All of the leftovers ended up in one bowl (even though we DID ask people to scrape what they wouldn’t eat off their plate before they started eating) and we brought the bowl out to serve in lots of little bowls to the kids. Therein lay the problems. First, it looked to some people like we were serving all the scraps from plates AFTER people had eaten. Second, it’s considered somewhat uncivilized to eat rice out of a bowl here. Bowls are for soup or cereal, rice is served on plates. So on our first effort at feeding hungry kids, we ended up instead with some angry, offended parents. Not what we were going for.

Your first reaction to this story may be outrage – and it was definitely many people’s first reaction here too. How could these parents of hungry children be so foolish as to turn down perfectly good food? Can “beggars” really be choosers? No wonder this country’s so screwed up if people will let something so minor as bowls vs. plates get in the way of feeding their children? I think there’s some merit in all of those arguments, but this experience was also an incredibly important reminder about basic human dignity. No matter how poor and desperate a person is, she has the right to defend her own dignity – however she chooses to define that, even if I think it’s absurd. And if she perceives that our gift of food – no matter in what spirit it was offered – was presented in a way that disrespects her and her children, then she absolutely has the right to refuse it. It feels kind of gross to us – entitled, arrogant, ungrateful – but would you let your children eat food that you thought had been thrown away? Of course not.

So after our hurt feelings subsided a bit, we went back to the drawing board. Instead of serving the food from one big bowl, we plated it ahead of time, and made sure that each plate looked nice. Instead of just inviting the children in, Christina went to their parents first – and she wisely chose the ones who had made the biggest fuss last time – to make sure they understood that these were leftovers taken off plates before people ate rather than after. Since our first failed attempt, every afternoon for the past two weeks we have fed about thirty children lunch. They come in together, sit down, share plates, drink as much clean water as they want, the big ones help the little ones eat, and then they help clean up before going to play at the playground. We haven’t figure out how this will work logistically once school starts, but at least we know now that we can do it, and that our efforts are appreciated by the children and their families.

Community organizing 101: you need to actually get the community involved in the organizing, or it might not be appreciated the way you think it should be! And if at first you don’t succeed … go back to the drawing board!

Teeth 2 – Franzi

Remember the story about the little baby from the Missionaries of Charity with the dental abscess? Well, here’s an amazing follow up. No, this is not the story of the miracle cure of that particular child. We haven’t been back since our first, visit, so we don’t know what happened to her. But about a week later, a little boy from the neighborhood came in to the school with a swollen mouth, fever, and terrible pain. Corey, the future dentist, took a look at him and confirmed that he too had one totally rotten tooth, and a terrible infection. Luckily, this one wasn’t as far along as the little girl at the orphanage, so Corey was able to scrape out the decayed inside of this kid’s tooth. He gave him some Tylenol, and his parents said they’d watch it for a few days and if the swelling didn’t go down they’d try top take him to the clinic to get the abscess drained.

Then a few days later when we were serving all the little kids lunch, this one little boy kept following Corey around smiling at him. He didn’t even recognize the little boy, who’s name is Franzi, because his face had been so swollen when they first met. Four days after Corey’s little procedure, the swelling was gone, his pain was gone, and his fever was gone. He just looked like a totally gorgeous, happy ten year old.

Don’t cry over spilled paint


In these last weeks before school starts, everyone’s busy painting classrooms, fixing desks, and cleaning and painting dorm rooms. Much has been made about the need for staff to model good work habits for kids, and one of those that kids often don’t do so well, is taking good care of tools and conserving resources. I had all this in mind as I organized a little group of five girls to clean and paint the inside of a particularly grimy looking classroom. As they washed the walls down, I was carefully moving a table so as to prevent paint from dripping on it. Of course, in the process, I completely knocked over a totally full bucket of paint. So much for my lesson in preserving resources! As the girls asll gasped and gathered around, I looked and them and asked, “uh oh, what should we do?” Luckily, I think maybe they’ve spilled a can of paint or two in their day because the oldest one, without even blinking, just said, “start painting!” So they started dipping their brushes and rollers in the giant paint puddle on the concrete floor, and started throwing it up on walls. Then I went and found a dustpan, and one of the girls and I cleaned up pretty much the whole big puddle. Two hours later, the room was all painted, the puddle was all cleaned up (hooray for acrylic paint and cement floors!) and we all had a quick thinking lesson in improvising when things don’t quite go as planned.

Out and About: Cold Coke and Sugar Cane


Very exciting news … we officially have permission to leave the front gates of school and walk about twenty steps down the street to a little shop that sells cold Cokes and cookies and stuff like that. It sounds absurd, but this is a good sign that things are really quite calm here these days, because there have been years here that weren’t so calm when volunteers have never been allowed out – even twenty steps away – unescourted. I enjoyed my first cold Coke in a glass bottle immensely the other day.

I also went for a walk with Christina into the neighborhood, which people simply call “the zone.” Christina has lived here with her family off and on for about 12 years. Her kids have run around and played with all the neighborhood kids, and so everyone knows her, and she knows everyone. We walked to the market, stopping along the way to say hello to everyone who was just hanging out. That’s one of the strangest things to get used to about life here – the people just sitting around. So few people have jobs (in the way we think of a job – a place you get up in the morning and go to every day.) So as you walk around the neighborhood, there are just people sitting on the side of the road, in front of their houses etc. We met an elderly lady who is the smallest adult human I’ve ever seen. Just a tiny, frail woman, but totally with it. She sat inside her little house, with all of the women and children in her family sitting around outside. We stopped to bounce some babies and talk to the ladies. Christina asked one lady if her husband had work, and she said no. She followed up by asking her what he does all day. Her response is indicative of many people’s lives here, “Li chita, li mache.” (He sits, he walks …)

Our last stop was the vegetable market to buy some food for our dinner. We found wonderfully huge avocados as well as some eggplant (which made it into our lasagna this week … very tasty!) Then I spotted a man with long stalks of something purplish and I asked what he was selling. Sugar Cane! I have to pause here for a little history lesson.

In my ninth grade world history classes at PHA, I teach a huge unit on revolutions – the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions. Critical to the story of the Haitian Revolution, of course, is sugar cane. The French followed the Spanish to Hispaniola first in search of gold, but once they had exhausted all of those resources, (and most of the native people were dead) they looked for new ways to make money. The obvious answer was sugar. The French built a brutal and wildly successful plantation system based on West African slave labor working to produce one of the island’s natural products. The life expectancy for a slave imported to Saint Domingue (as the French colony was then known) was less than one year since the labor and living conditions were so horrific. Meanwhile, this tiny half of an island became the jewel of the French empire and the envy of the other European powers … until 1791 when the slave population of the island organized the first and only successful slave revolution in history and became the western hemisphere’s second independent nation.

Unfortunately the rest of the story doesn’t end happily ever after, but that’s for another day. I tell this part of the story now because I had never even seen, let alone tasted, sugar cane before. In my lessons on the Haitian Revolution at PHA, I have always relied on the kids from the Caribbean to describe the look and taste of sugar cane. First of all, it’s much thicker than I thought it would be. It’s probably about an inch and a half in diameter. It has a purplish skin on it, that requires a machete to peel and it’s the color of the flesh of an apple inside. I asked the man for one, and he spent about five minutes peeling the skin off, then chopping it into about five pieces about five inches long each. I thanked him, paid him about 25 cents and went on my way. To eat sugar cane, you bite off a piece, and chew it, suck out all the juice, then spit it out. It has the texture of an apple, but it’s so fibrous it would be gross to swallow. But the juice is … pure sugary deliciousness. As I stood on the street and walked along chewing on the sugar cane, I kept thinking about this country’s sad, proud, complicated history … and it all began with sugar cane.

Monday, August 31, 2009

How do YOU eat a Mango?

James showed up for dinner tonight with a bowl full of mangos. It’s the very end of mango season here, so we were pretty excited to enjoy one before they’re done for the winter. As I picked a mango out of the bowl, and headed to the shelf to grab a knife, I was met with a look of absolute disgust from Jimmy. He pointed to the knife and the mango and said, “no, no no. Put that back.” I asked him how I’m supposed to eat it without one and he smiled and responded, “with your teeth!” So I did. Um, it was messy, but delicious. There was mango juice all over my face and hands, and those stringy mango fibers all stuck in my teeth. Meanwhile across the table from me, Elissa refused to abandon her orderly American mango eating style. She neatly cut the flesh away from the peel and enjoyed bite sized chunks of mango, while keeping her face and hands relatively clean. Bellegarde shot her good natured glances of disdain as he gnawed on his own mango.

Bellegarde and I decided the mango eating situation is a pretty good metaphor for the difference between the Haitian and US American way of doing things. The American way is clean, efficient, and orderly, and yields satisfying results. The Haitian way is carefree and way more fun, but leaves a mess all over the place. Which way is better? Good question. Think about that one ….

Picture this …

Ten white people and one Haitian guy in a giant white Land Cruiser barreling through the crowded streets of Port au Prince on a Sunday, blasting old Cars songs with the windows down. And yes, we were singing along.

Then picture this …

Me wielding a pickax. I helped dig up and move a small tree from a part of a garden where it was growing into a footpath to another corner of the garden. One of the Haitian staff, one of the other volunteers and a kid from the neighborhood did most of the heavy digging, but then I decided that shoveling out the loosened dirt was getting dull, so I swung the pickax a few times. I kind of loved it … for about 20 minutes. Then I was done. And these guys do this all day sometimes. I’m working may way up to using a machete. Stay tuned for that adventure.

Petonville

This weekend brought not one, not two but THREE adventures outside the school walls. The trip to the Supermarket was on Saturday afternoon. Then Sunday morning we drove to the Scalabrini Seminary for Mass, this time in English. After Mass the Italian priest treated us to some homemade GELATO. Mmmmmmm. Later in the afternoon we headed out in the giant land cruiser (11 people in all) to drive to the home of one of the board members and benefactors to the school who lives in a nearby town called Petonville. This man runs two businesses that employ about 90 people and he has become one of the wealthiest men in Haiti. His home is up in the hills, and I knew we were entering a nice section of town because all the roads were paved, and the walls of all the houses were round, pretty stones, rather than concrete blocks. In addition to his financial support, his connections within the country are invaluable for getting things done at LCS. Anyway, his house is simply beautiful. We sat out on an open patio overlooking their small swimming pool and shady palm trees all around. His wife brought us iced tea, Tostitos and salsa, and chocolate cupcakes from the freezer! It was lovely to see a person who has built himself up in this country, and who works hard still on behalf of people who are struggling to do the same. And it was lovely to have a few little tastes of home!

After we left his house, we drove through the town of Petonville and stopped at the park in the center. It reminded me more of a small Central American city, with its pastel colored church and sketchy park in the center surrounded by people selling all kinds of food and crafts. We saw a young man painting an enormous canvas – at least six feet by six feet – of a tropical scene full of trees and birds and flowers. The colors were magnificent and the skill of this young artist was undeniable. We asked how much he was commissioned to paint it, and we were told 2000 US dollars. I think that may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I certainly hope he is being very well paid!

We walked along the street looking at lots of other paintings – the kind I love full of bright colors and scenes of regular people doing regular people things. We weren’t in the market to buy today, though I know I will be at some point in the future! A boy about 12 years old started following us asking for money and the little juices that some of us were drinking. We did our best to just walk and not engage him, but he actually tried to grab the juice out of a few people’s hands. We piled into the car and started to drive away, and the boy hopped on the back and rode along with us. I’m not really sure why … maybe just to mess with us. Maybe for fun. Maybe for a ride. After a few minutes when we stopped to turn, he hopped off, probably hoping to avoid any trouble. The whole day made for one of those crazy contrasts: from the beautiful home of one of the elite, to the sad plight of a street kid. I’m sure it won’t be the last experience like that.

If I run out of sunblock –

They have my Neutrogena SPF 55 at the DeliMart supermarket! It’s 20 US dollars, but it’s good to know it’s there in case of an emergency. We went on our first shopping adventure on Saturday, to the big upscale grocery store in a nicer section of the city. Wow … it was nice. Air conditioning and all the imported goodies you could ever want (with imported prices to match them!) We went in search of snacks, mostly, since our three meals are taken care of here. But sometimes there’s not quite enough to really get one’s fill, or the 100% carb meals occasionally leave a person feeling hungry again 2 hours later. We came out with apples, grapes, crunchy peanut butter, cookies, Pringles, soda and a little bag of SKITTLES. The prices on some of the imported stuff were crazy. 5 US dollars for Oreos, 2 dollars for a can of Pringles, 20 dollars for my sunblock! The local stuff on the other hand was pretty reasonable. A package of about 30 cookies was a dollar. It was good to discover that really, all the stuff we could find ourselves “needing” here can be found relatively easily. Evidently Haiti is not planet Jupiter.

Boulyon

I mentioned our Saturday lunch feast a few weeks ago, but I need to describe this in more detail. All three Saturday’s we’ve been here, James (one of the staff / LCS grads) coordinates the creation of an amazing stew. He shops in the morning and comes back with bags and bags of potatoes, carrots, plantains, malanga, and kabrit (goat meat.) The “faktory boulyon” opens at about 10 am (about an hour after the breakfast dishes are cleaned up.) James coordinates the show and runs back and forth from the industrial kitchen in the school cafeteria to the one in the administration building where we live. The real cooking is done on the big burners in the huge cauldrons in the school kitchen and we do all the prep in the smaller kitchen. 4 people peel, clean and chop about 20 potatoes, 20 plantains, a pile of malanga (another root vegetable that remains somewhat mysterious to me …) James butchers and seasons the meat. Then another team of 2 or 3 makes the juice. I think my favorite thing about Haiti might be this juice. I washed and squeezed (by hand) about 30 oranges … which, oddly, are green. Then there was mountain of a fruit called Grenadian. They’re little yellow fruits full of an orange flesh and tons of black seeds. The seeds make them not so practical to eat, but great for juice because you can strain them out. But the juice making process took me and 2 other people about an hour and a half. At the end – after all that time with my fingers in citrus and bleachy water – my fingers were freakishly pruney. But this juice – with all its freshness and the PILE of sugar they add to it – is heavenly. Back to the boulyon … the finishing touch are the little dumplings that get dropped into the boiling broth at the end. The boulyon emerges from the kitchen around 2 pm and somewhere between 20 and 30 people sit down for the best meal of the week. There’s always enough for seconds, though I’ve finally learned that if you eat this stuff too fast and think you want seconds, you usually discover about ten minutes later that you’re so full you can’t move. Someone mentioned today that all the ingredients for that meal – nothing imported or pre-packaged – cost around 20 US dollars. I love Saturdays.

PS – I just noticed that all of these blog posts are about food. Um … yeah. I offer no analysis of this fact. Make of it whatever you want to!