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.

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.

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!