Spaghetti for Breakfast: Then picture this …

About Louverture Cleary School

Louverture Cleary School (LCS) is a private, Catholic boarding school near Port au Prince Haiti. Unlike most private boarding schools, this school costs almost nothing for students to attend. Though it is one of the best schools in the country academically speaking, it is not for the small elite with money. Kids at this school come from families who might otherwise struggle to send them to school at all. Students here are incredibly talented academically, but the purpose of this school is not to train kids for the best foreign universities, to go out and make money somewhere else. This school's mission is to transform Haiti, one child at a time. Students learn to value hard work - both physical work and intellectual work - and they are challenged always to live lives of service to the community around them. Upon graduation, they go to universities here, get jobs here, and many stay on to work at the school itself. Having met many graduates, I am amazed and impressed by the people this school produces. They are intelligent, kind, fun, caring people who I really think could be the ones to transform this country.

Monday, August 31, 2009

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.