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.