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.
No comments:
Post a Comment