I wrote the article for the June edition of the THP newsletter about the graduation of the class of 2010, who named themselves “Odyssey.” The article will be published later in June (so is written in the past tense about an event that hasn’t happened yet … but you get the idea.) I think it came out well, and tells a good story about some special people. Here it is …
The LCS class of 2010 made a particularly appropriate choice this year in choosing their class name, Odyssey Class. Truly their years at LCS have been just that. They came to Santo 5 as eleven year olds in September of 2003, and after the chaotic failure of the government in February of their sixieme (7th grade) year, and a violent earthquake in January of their philo (senior) year, their graduation on June 6 was a particularly joyful celebration of the accomplishments and future of these 41 men and women. But these graduates don’t dwell on the two great tragedies that dominated their first and last years at Louverture Cleary. They focus instead on their many happy memories, their wonderful friends, teachers and mentors, and the mix of joy and sadness that they feel as this chapter of their lives comes to a close.
Stecy Naika came to LCS as an eleven year old, leaving the home she had shared with her aunt since the age of three. To get Stecy to her primary school, and herself to work on time each morning, her aunt, Marie Kettly, had to wake Stecy at 4:30 am. When she heard about LCS from a friend at her church, Marie Kettly knew that her niece was intelligent enough to get in, and she loved the academic rigor and the discipline of the school. As she sat reminiscing last month, Marie Kettly explained in Kreyol that “Stecy was so timid as a little girl. Now she is confident and loves to talk with everyone.”
Truly, Stecy is one of the most gregarious of her classmates, and as her favorite class has always been English, she expresses herself with flair in her third language. She hopes to go on to University to study International Relations. Like all Louverture Cleary students, she has so much love for her country, and the hope that she and the rest of the Louverturians will be the leaders who will make a brighter future for Haiti. She explained that her happiest memories of LCS are of “the many people who think about a better world, and work for it, like Mr. Moynihan, Mr. Zamy, and Mr. Pierre.” She knows that it is their example and the discipline which they provided that have prepared her to “work hard and face the mean world.” She smiled as she added, “I’m not scared of anybody because I don’t have to worry about what the world thinks. I can be myself.”
In the days and weeks after the January 12th earthquake, these Philo students stepped up to leadership that would never be demanded of most students their age. As the staff and volunteers were occupied with preparing meals, and clearing debris, and coordinating with THP in then US, it was the philo students who facilitated the orderly distribution of meals on the soccer field, and the cleaning of dishes. They led the morning prayers, and organized both work projects and games for the younger students. Their leadership was essential in those days, and it is exactly this hard work and leadership that Haiti desperately needs at this critical moment in its history.
Stecy’s eyes filled with tears as she talked about her feelings on graduation day. She mused, “I am turning a page of my story and beginning a new chapter, and I am happy, but also sad to leave so many friends.” Her Aunt smiled as she echoed those same mixed emotions, explaining, “I am proud of Stecy and happy that my work as a parent is done.” She paused before adding, “but I know that my work is not really done.” As they smile for pictures and hug friends and teachers goodbye, Stecy and her Odyssey classmates know too, that their journey is only just beginning.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Poetry Out Loud
Poetry Out Loud
At PHA, one of my favorite new traditions is the annual “Poetry Out Loud” competition. Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition for high school students, and a PHA sophomore has been the Massachusetts state champion for two years in a row. The purpose of the competition is to encourage a love of poetry – of all different styles – in high school students. The idea is that the best way to demonstrate deep understanding of a poem, is to memorize and recite it, so that a student’s own unique interpretation of the poem will be communicated through her performance. It’s fun every year to watch the kids who don’t say much in class shine as they perform a published poem, and to discover new interpretations of poems that I thought I had understood before.
LCS kids love to perform, and they love to compete, so I thought that maybe some of them would rise to the challenge of memorizing and performing a poem in English. Sure enough, they did. I chose poems that I thought they could access – Shel Silverstein and Langston Hughes and a few other lesser known poems – and also invited them to write, memorize and perform an original poem in English. Sure enough, we had eleven participants who did an incredible job performing the poems. The winner was a seconde (10th grade) student named Caleb who wrote a hilarious poem about mosquitoes, and the second and third place finishers both performed the Shel Silversetein poem “Whatif …” The other kids cheered like crazy, and I think next year there will be even more participation. There are a few videos here – of Caleb the winner, Vanessa the runner up, and Olibirs, a philo student who wrote an absolutely hilarious poem – an ode to the incinerator.
At the same time as the poetry competition, the kids were putting on their annual language competition, known in French as la genie. Each class chooses a team of six to compete against the other classes in a competition full of questions in French, English and Spanish. There are translations, vocabulary, spelling and the hardest of all, idiomatic expressions. It was amazing to watch their facility with juggling three foreign languages at once, and also to witness the passion of the participants and their classmates. They cheered and roared when someone spelled a hard word correctly as if it were a world cup match. The winners got to choose a book from some extra books from the library, and all participants got “tickets” to redeem at the language store (where they can buy school supplies and other little goodies.)
As the school year winds down, it has been delightful to watch the kids enjoying some of these simple traditions and embracing new ones with such enthusiasm.
At PHA, one of my favorite new traditions is the annual “Poetry Out Loud” competition. Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition for high school students, and a PHA sophomore has been the Massachusetts state champion for two years in a row. The purpose of the competition is to encourage a love of poetry – of all different styles – in high school students. The idea is that the best way to demonstrate deep understanding of a poem, is to memorize and recite it, so that a student’s own unique interpretation of the poem will be communicated through her performance. It’s fun every year to watch the kids who don’t say much in class shine as they perform a published poem, and to discover new interpretations of poems that I thought I had understood before.
LCS kids love to perform, and they love to compete, so I thought that maybe some of them would rise to the challenge of memorizing and performing a poem in English. Sure enough, they did. I chose poems that I thought they could access – Shel Silverstein and Langston Hughes and a few other lesser known poems – and also invited them to write, memorize and perform an original poem in English. Sure enough, we had eleven participants who did an incredible job performing the poems. The winner was a seconde (10th grade) student named Caleb who wrote a hilarious poem about mosquitoes, and the second and third place finishers both performed the Shel Silversetein poem “Whatif …” The other kids cheered like crazy, and I think next year there will be even more participation. There are a few videos here – of Caleb the winner, Vanessa the runner up, and Olibirs, a philo student who wrote an absolutely hilarious poem – an ode to the incinerator.
At the same time as the poetry competition, the kids were putting on their annual language competition, known in French as la genie. Each class chooses a team of six to compete against the other classes in a competition full of questions in French, English and Spanish. There are translations, vocabulary, spelling and the hardest of all, idiomatic expressions. It was amazing to watch their facility with juggling three foreign languages at once, and also to witness the passion of the participants and their classmates. They cheered and roared when someone spelled a hard word correctly as if it were a world cup match. The winners got to choose a book from some extra books from the library, and all participants got “tickets” to redeem at the language store (where they can buy school supplies and other little goodies.)
As the school year winds down, it has been delightful to watch the kids enjoying some of these simple traditions and embracing new ones with such enthusiasm.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
New website!
Check out the new website for the Haitian Project! It's beautiful and full of so many great pictures, as well as all of the updates since the earthquake. You can sign up to receive weekly updates, and make donations online.
http://haitianproject.org/
http://haitianproject.org/
Felisitasyon Klas 2010
Graduation for the Louverture Cleary School class of 2010 will be on Saturday June 5, the scheduled graduation day since last August. I think these might be the only kids in Port au Prince graduating on time, and I’m really proud to have been a part of making this small miracle possible. They’ll still have to prepare for their national exams, which unfortunately will not take place until the end of August, as opposed to late June. But we’ll celebrate the accomplishments and futures of the class of 2010 with the community and their families on the regularly scheduled day. That really is a small miracle.
This week I had the privilege of taking the official class picture, and the individual cap and gown photos for each student. These will be printed in the US, and presented to the kids as a gift on their graduation day. The kids are struggling a bit with the fact that their philo (senior) year was without many of the fun traditions and celebrations that they have watched other classes enjoy for the past six years. They didn’t get to plan the all day party in April which usually marks the school’s birthday. They’re not going to have the traditional weekend retreat in May. Even the food at their graduation dinner is going to have to be a little different this year. All of these changes are necessities, based on the lost academic time, the unique financial requirements of the year, and the shifted focus of many staff members. So, given their quiet disappointment about all of this, it was really a pleasure to take them through a process that was so totally joyful. They were positively giddy as they posed for their class picture, and tried on the white gowns and red caps and did their hair and posed for their portraits. I’ve never taken formal portraits before in my life, and really, I’m not that good at it. But they didn’t care. It was all so much fun.
Incidentally … one of the other small miracles of this year is the fact that two days before coming back to Haiti I made a total impulse purchase and bought a really nice digital SLR camera. I had enjoyed taking pictures so much in Haiti, and I was getting frustrated with my little point and shoot, so on January 8, I bit the bullet and bought the fancy Cannon. However, as soon as I was back in Haiti, I had major guilt about it. How had I just dropped 600 dollars on a toy when people here don’t see that much money in a year? Well, two days later, as I found myself taking detailed pictures of cracked columns and fallen plaster and dangling concrete and sending them to engineers in the US who were working to determine the structural integrity of our buildings … I realized that my impulse to buy that camera wasn’t entirely my own. That camera has been essential in sharing the LCS story with our friends in United States, and I couldn’t have done it with my little point and shoot. Hooray for impulse buys! I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m coveting an expensive pair of shoes …
Soup Joumoun
We weren’t in Haiti on January 1st to celebrate Haitian Independence Day, so we had plans to celebrate it with the Haitian and US American staff together on the first weekend after we returned in January. Well … other things happened … and we just never got around to it –until today!
Haiti celebrates its independence from France on January 1 each year, because after expelling the last French troops in November of 1803, Jean Jacques Dessalines, the revolutionary leader and first president, declared that independence would be proclaimed and celebrated on the first day of the new year. That day, in Cap Haitian, the city on the north coast with the citadel from which the last French ships had sailed the previous November, Dessalines proclaimed the Haitian Declaration of Independence. Somewhat ironically – or maybe tragically – the document was written in French, the language of Haiti’s colonial oppressors, since the descendants of Africans from so many different places did not share a common language of their own. It’s a shocking document, both for the striking resemblance it bears to the language and sentiments of the American Declaration of Independence written about thirty years before, as well as for the very un-Jeffersonian anger and violence which permeates it. Promises to “swear to the entire universe, to posterity, to ourselves, to renounce forever to France, and to die rather than to live under its domination,” are followed by the not so veiled threat to “pursue forever the traitors and the enemies of [our] independence.” Needless to say, after fifteen years of the most horrific violence, this declaration of independence was not sealed with handshakes and the flourish of a quill pen. It was sealed with blood and promises of retribution.
Along with the official pronouncement of independence, Dessalines led the people in a symbolic reclaiming of their rights as free people. That morning, he ate squash soup, the French delicacy long refused to the slaves, and invited the people gathered to do the same. Since then, the tradition in Haiti and in Haitian homes in the US is to greet the new year not with champagne toasts and wild parties, but with family and friends gathered around an early morning breakfast of squash soup. For years teaching in Cambridge, I have heard Haitian kids talk about their unique New Years tradition, and have occasionally enjoyed a Tupperware bowl full of squash soup leftovers on January 3 when school begins again, and I have always wanted to try making it myself.
This morning Benoit and I met in the kitchen at about 4:15. Unfortunately the electricity was out, as it often is at that time of the morning after the batteries have run out of juice and before the sun has come up to get the solar power going again. He chopped open the GIANT green squash, which looks like an orange pumpkin inside, and scooped out the guts. I got to work washing, peeling, and chopping sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions and garlic. As we worked, more helpers appeared, we drank two pots of coffee, and listened to Wyclef Jean. We boiled the squash, then pureed it – skin and all – in a blender. Benoit had prepared the meat before in the traditional way – by soaking it in citrus juices, then boiling it with garlic and scallions. We then boiled the pureed squash, and added the veggies, meat, macaroni, and lots of salt. (It wouldn’t be Haitian food without lots of salt!) By about 6:45 we were ready and a much larger than usual crowd gathered for an early Saturday morning breakfast. We had so much food that we were able to share it with some of the neighbors – men who were on campus to help with a building project, and some of the women who come to wash the clothes of those of us who are utterly incapable of doing so ourselves. We wished each other Bon Anè, and declared it the new year of 2010 ½ … and frankly, given all that’s happened here since January, it felt kind of good to turn the page of the calendar, even if it was to an imaginary new year.
Haiti celebrates its independence from France on January 1 each year, because after expelling the last French troops in November of 1803, Jean Jacques Dessalines, the revolutionary leader and first president, declared that independence would be proclaimed and celebrated on the first day of the new year. That day, in Cap Haitian, the city on the north coast with the citadel from which the last French ships had sailed the previous November, Dessalines proclaimed the Haitian Declaration of Independence. Somewhat ironically – or maybe tragically – the document was written in French, the language of Haiti’s colonial oppressors, since the descendants of Africans from so many different places did not share a common language of their own. It’s a shocking document, both for the striking resemblance it bears to the language and sentiments of the American Declaration of Independence written about thirty years before, as well as for the very un-Jeffersonian anger and violence which permeates it. Promises to “swear to the entire universe, to posterity, to ourselves, to renounce forever to France, and to die rather than to live under its domination,” are followed by the not so veiled threat to “pursue forever the traitors and the enemies of [our] independence.” Needless to say, after fifteen years of the most horrific violence, this declaration of independence was not sealed with handshakes and the flourish of a quill pen. It was sealed with blood and promises of retribution.
Along with the official pronouncement of independence, Dessalines led the people in a symbolic reclaiming of their rights as free people. That morning, he ate squash soup, the French delicacy long refused to the slaves, and invited the people gathered to do the same. Since then, the tradition in Haiti and in Haitian homes in the US is to greet the new year not with champagne toasts and wild parties, but with family and friends gathered around an early morning breakfast of squash soup. For years teaching in Cambridge, I have heard Haitian kids talk about their unique New Years tradition, and have occasionally enjoyed a Tupperware bowl full of squash soup leftovers on January 3 when school begins again, and I have always wanted to try making it myself.
This morning Benoit and I met in the kitchen at about 4:15. Unfortunately the electricity was out, as it often is at that time of the morning after the batteries have run out of juice and before the sun has come up to get the solar power going again. He chopped open the GIANT green squash, which looks like an orange pumpkin inside, and scooped out the guts. I got to work washing, peeling, and chopping sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions and garlic. As we worked, more helpers appeared, we drank two pots of coffee, and listened to Wyclef Jean. We boiled the squash, then pureed it – skin and all – in a blender. Benoit had prepared the meat before in the traditional way – by soaking it in citrus juices, then boiling it with garlic and scallions. We then boiled the pureed squash, and added the veggies, meat, macaroni, and lots of salt. (It wouldn’t be Haitian food without lots of salt!) By about 6:45 we were ready and a much larger than usual crowd gathered for an early Saturday morning breakfast. We had so much food that we were able to share it with some of the neighbors – men who were on campus to help with a building project, and some of the women who come to wash the clothes of those of us who are utterly incapable of doing so ourselves. We wished each other Bon Anè, and declared it the new year of 2010 ½ … and frankly, given all that’s happened here since January, it felt kind of good to turn the page of the calendar, even if it was to an imaginary new year.
Fahrenheit 451
Nobody likes the idea of burning books. I know I certain;y don't, but sometimes you just have to.
Working for so long in schools, I have had lots of opportunities to be irritated by the “donations” that people make to the “less fortunate.” They pack their boxes full of the crap they don’t want anymore, drop it off at the door of a local charity, pat themselves on the back for their generosity and take a little tax write-off. Then, the school or charity has to figure out what to do with the donations. Don’t get me wrong, oftentimes people donate wonderful, useful things to schools. But too often they really just donate the crap that they don’t want and don’t know how to get rid of. So, I’ve had to face the question of what to do with unwanted, outdated, irrelevant books. My answer is always to resist the temptation to “save them because maybe some day someone will want them.” No, if we can’t use it right now, then I choose clean, organized storage spaces over the unlikely possibility that some mythical, future teacher will find a good use for the materials that all the actual teachers of the present think are useless. At PHA, this has meant that I have often led parades of boxes of books to the dumpster, or more recently to the curb where a non-profit recycling company picks them up. In Haiti, it’s not that simple.
On Thursday, a huge truck from Food for the Poor pulled up on Santo 5 and I watched as boxes and boxes of mysterious donations walked in the door of the school. Food for the Poor donates a lot of food to LCS, and this year they also provided us with 12 gently used, well refurbished computers for the kids’ computer lab. But in exchange for all the useful things they bring us, sometimes they bring us crap. I think I’ve written about the cases and cases of tiny leather cowboy boots, and the rejected cosmetics for white people that have appeared on our doorstep in the past. This time it was about a hundred boxes of English curriculum materials from some elementary school district in Ohio. There were a few boxes of reading anthologies, fifteen copies of three different books, which will be incredibly useful for the English teachers working with our youngest students. But beyond these ten boxes, there were 90 of teachers’ editions, answer booklets, catalogues, glossy professional development guides, and lots of other propaganda for the publishers of the “Storytown” reading program. The part when I really went through the roof was when I opened the box full of cardboard sleeves that looked like they contained some kind of DVD or CD-Rom … but no … oh wait … they were all empty. Thanks for that.
We sorted through the things we can legitimately use and then had to face that awkward questions about what we should do with the rest of it? I was a proponent of burning it, the way we burn all our trash around here. But the whole day as we sorted all the brightly colored spiral bound teachers’ editions on tables outside on the driveway, the kids were watching curiously as they passed by. They love books … any books … but especially books in English. I tried to show some that these weren’t books for reading – some were literally catalogues of additional curriculum materials. But as we started walking wheelbarrows full of materials back to the incinerator, the kids were begging us not to. So we stopped. What’s worse, giving poor kids useless stuff that will probably end up contributing to the momentous trash problem in this country, or the scandal of burning books in a school full of kids who are hungry to learn? We opted for the lesser evil behind door number 1.
So on Friday afternoon we set up tables by the front gate, and as kids were dismissed for the weekend, they took whatever they wanted. And they wanted all of it. Actually, despite our best efforts at order and discipline, they pretty much stampeded the tables to get what they could. Situations like this always make me – and pretty much everyone else who comes from cultures of wealth and privilege – really uncomfortable. When you’re so accustomed to not having anything, it doesn’t matter what the free thing being offered is – you’ll pretty much run over a kid half your size to get your hands on it because you know it’s not going to be there tomorrow.
By three o’clock the kids were gone and so were the unwanted books. We were left to burn the cardboard boxes and contemplate the weirdly complex ethical decisions that Haiti forces us to make. Sometimes the right answer is so obvious, and sometimes it’s a million shades of gray.
Working for so long in schools, I have had lots of opportunities to be irritated by the “donations” that people make to the “less fortunate.” They pack their boxes full of the crap they don’t want anymore, drop it off at the door of a local charity, pat themselves on the back for their generosity and take a little tax write-off. Then, the school or charity has to figure out what to do with the donations. Don’t get me wrong, oftentimes people donate wonderful, useful things to schools. But too often they really just donate the crap that they don’t want and don’t know how to get rid of. So, I’ve had to face the question of what to do with unwanted, outdated, irrelevant books. My answer is always to resist the temptation to “save them because maybe some day someone will want them.” No, if we can’t use it right now, then I choose clean, organized storage spaces over the unlikely possibility that some mythical, future teacher will find a good use for the materials that all the actual teachers of the present think are useless. At PHA, this has meant that I have often led parades of boxes of books to the dumpster, or more recently to the curb where a non-profit recycling company picks them up. In Haiti, it’s not that simple.
On Thursday, a huge truck from Food for the Poor pulled up on Santo 5 and I watched as boxes and boxes of mysterious donations walked in the door of the school. Food for the Poor donates a lot of food to LCS, and this year they also provided us with 12 gently used, well refurbished computers for the kids’ computer lab. But in exchange for all the useful things they bring us, sometimes they bring us crap. I think I’ve written about the cases and cases of tiny leather cowboy boots, and the rejected cosmetics for white people that have appeared on our doorstep in the past. This time it was about a hundred boxes of English curriculum materials from some elementary school district in Ohio. There were a few boxes of reading anthologies, fifteen copies of three different books, which will be incredibly useful for the English teachers working with our youngest students. But beyond these ten boxes, there were 90 of teachers’ editions, answer booklets, catalogues, glossy professional development guides, and lots of other propaganda for the publishers of the “Storytown” reading program. The part when I really went through the roof was when I opened the box full of cardboard sleeves that looked like they contained some kind of DVD or CD-Rom … but no … oh wait … they were all empty. Thanks for that.
We sorted through the things we can legitimately use and then had to face that awkward questions about what we should do with the rest of it? I was a proponent of burning it, the way we burn all our trash around here. But the whole day as we sorted all the brightly colored spiral bound teachers’ editions on tables outside on the driveway, the kids were watching curiously as they passed by. They love books … any books … but especially books in English. I tried to show some that these weren’t books for reading – some were literally catalogues of additional curriculum materials. But as we started walking wheelbarrows full of materials back to the incinerator, the kids were begging us not to. So we stopped. What’s worse, giving poor kids useless stuff that will probably end up contributing to the momentous trash problem in this country, or the scandal of burning books in a school full of kids who are hungry to learn? We opted for the lesser evil behind door number 1.
So on Friday afternoon we set up tables by the front gate, and as kids were dismissed for the weekend, they took whatever they wanted. And they wanted all of it. Actually, despite our best efforts at order and discipline, they pretty much stampeded the tables to get what they could. Situations like this always make me – and pretty much everyone else who comes from cultures of wealth and privilege – really uncomfortable. When you’re so accustomed to not having anything, it doesn’t matter what the free thing being offered is – you’ll pretty much run over a kid half your size to get your hands on it because you know it’s not going to be there tomorrow.
By three o’clock the kids were gone and so were the unwanted books. We were left to burn the cardboard boxes and contemplate the weirdly complex ethical decisions that Haiti forces us to make. Sometimes the right answer is so obvious, and sometimes it’s a million shades of gray.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The Home Stretch
The kids have been so worried about when school will end. When the government officially reopened schools in April, the word eventually came down that the national exams would be in August instead of June, and that schools should continue through the end of July. Well, for the kids here who never actually left even when we were having “unofficial” school, that news came as a pretty terrible blow, not only for the prospect of having to be in class instead of watching the World Cup matches in June, but also for sitting in the 100 degree blue tents in the hottest part of the summer. After much deliberation, the LCS administration decided that we will have graduation as scheduled at the beginning of June, but that the younger classes will all continue classes through the end of June, in order to give all of their teachers an opportunity to complete fair evaluations of their work over a reasonable period of time. While the volunteers will finish our classes in early June and then go home, the Haitian teachers will continue theirs until the end of the month, and the kids will stay at school without us. It’s absolutely the right decision, even though it’s not particularly popular with anyone. But isn’t that usually the case with most absolutely right decisions?
So now I’m looking at my last six weeks here trying to figure out what I need to be working on. Obviously I have all of my own classes and exams to finish, but I suddenly have this almost panicked sense of wanting to get so many other things done. I’m working with the volunteers on documenting our curriculum more formally and in a more uniform manner than it has ever been documented before, so that future volunteers are left with a somewhat more clear roadmap of what has been done, and what ought to be done in the future. I’m working on the schedule for the month of June, which will look a bit different without the ten American teachers. A few of us are working on an LCS recipe book to document how to make our favorite meals for 30. I’m so excited that five of the ten volunteers have chosen to stay for a second year next year, but unfortunately the five who like to cook are the ones leaving, so we’re trying to help them out as much as we can. Other than that, I’m trying to enjoy the kids and the mangoes and all the uniquely Haitian experiences that happen here every day – the wonderful, the absurd and even the incredibly irritating ones.
I will be returning to Boston on Sunday June 6th the day after LCS graduation. Unfortunately my flight will put me in about an hour or two late for the PHA graduation that Sunday afternoon, so I’ll miss the big day for that group of kids whom I’ve known since they were eleven. I’m so happy to be returning to Boston and PHA, a community that I love so much, in which I have essentially grown up as an educator over the past eight years. My year away from PHA has provided me with the space and perspective I needed to decide to pursue a more formal leadership role within the school. The school is undergoing an important transition right now, reuniting the middle school and high school on the same campus, so this was a great opportunity for me to make a career shift. Next year I’ll serve as an assistant principal with primary responsibility for the 11th and 12th grade students, as well as lots of work with teachers and parents. While it’s totally bizarre for me to imagine a life in school that’s not centered around my own classroom teaching, I’m excited for this new challenge. I think there are parts of this job that I’ll be really good at, and parts that will be really hard for me, and I so look forward to that experience. Being in Haiti this year has reminded me how much I love learning new things everyday, and having to think on my feet and adapt to whatever challenges the day throws my way. And I’m sure that some of the things I’ve learned here this year will help me to navigate the challenges ahead. At least those PHA kids won’t be able to get away with saying bad stuff in Kreyol around me!
So now I’m looking at my last six weeks here trying to figure out what I need to be working on. Obviously I have all of my own classes and exams to finish, but I suddenly have this almost panicked sense of wanting to get so many other things done. I’m working with the volunteers on documenting our curriculum more formally and in a more uniform manner than it has ever been documented before, so that future volunteers are left with a somewhat more clear roadmap of what has been done, and what ought to be done in the future. I’m working on the schedule for the month of June, which will look a bit different without the ten American teachers. A few of us are working on an LCS recipe book to document how to make our favorite meals for 30. I’m so excited that five of the ten volunteers have chosen to stay for a second year next year, but unfortunately the five who like to cook are the ones leaving, so we’re trying to help them out as much as we can. Other than that, I’m trying to enjoy the kids and the mangoes and all the uniquely Haitian experiences that happen here every day – the wonderful, the absurd and even the incredibly irritating ones.
I will be returning to Boston on Sunday June 6th the day after LCS graduation. Unfortunately my flight will put me in about an hour or two late for the PHA graduation that Sunday afternoon, so I’ll miss the big day for that group of kids whom I’ve known since they were eleven. I’m so happy to be returning to Boston and PHA, a community that I love so much, in which I have essentially grown up as an educator over the past eight years. My year away from PHA has provided me with the space and perspective I needed to decide to pursue a more formal leadership role within the school. The school is undergoing an important transition right now, reuniting the middle school and high school on the same campus, so this was a great opportunity for me to make a career shift. Next year I’ll serve as an assistant principal with primary responsibility for the 11th and 12th grade students, as well as lots of work with teachers and parents. While it’s totally bizarre for me to imagine a life in school that’s not centered around my own classroom teaching, I’m excited for this new challenge. I think there are parts of this job that I’ll be really good at, and parts that will be really hard for me, and I so look forward to that experience. Being in Haiti this year has reminded me how much I love learning new things everyday, and having to think on my feet and adapt to whatever challenges the day throws my way. And I’m sure that some of the things I’ve learned here this year will help me to navigate the challenges ahead. At least those PHA kids won’t be able to get away with saying bad stuff in Kreyol around me!
2012
I would like to thank the History Channel and Sony Pictures for perpetuating the absurd prophecy that the world will end in December in 2012. That’s going over real well right now in a country full of traumatized people who tend to lean toward apocalyptic conspiracy theories anyway, and who are now obviously particularly susceptible to such ideas. Thanks for that. I’m really enjoying having this conversation with a different kid every day.
Post Earthquake Haiku Therapy
About two weeks after the earthquake, I decided to play one of my favorite games … the community Haiku. It works like this: I write the first two lines of a Haiku, and everyone else writes his or her own last line. This “post earthquake haiku therapy” has been on our wall ever since, and I still half smile and half cringe every time I read it.
The first two lines are:
Seven point zero
What the hell is going on?
The five syllable final lines are as follows … with a little explanation of each person’s earthquake experience:
Betsy: Get under the couch!
I’ve already explained that my somewhat appropriate and sort of insane instinct was to climb under the couch in our common room to wait for the shaking to stop
Mary: Should we not get out?
Mary was with me and Kristen upstairs, and while her inclination to get the hell out was probably better than mine to climb under the couch … we didn’t go anywhere.
Kristen: Please stop shaking now.
I’d say this one’s self explanatory
Elissa: Uh oh … coconuts!
She was outside walking among the mango and coconut trees and incredibly, her first thought was what would happen if one fell on her head. If you’ve never seen a coconut fall to the ground, it could kill you.
Peter: Incinerator?
He was outside dumping a wheelbarrow full of trash into the incinerator when the cinderblock walls starting moving. He thought the incinerator walls themselves were about to fall. Miraculously, only a few of the blocks actually did fall.
Samanthaa: Uh guys, get out now!
She was also near the incinerator with Peter and ran with the kids on the soccer field toward the center of the soccer field, away from the walls that were waving and crumbling.
Jon: Don’t push, pull instead.
Jon and Corey were making dinner in the kitchen and had a huge pot of water boiling on the stove. Amazingly, it didn’t completely fall off the stove. They ran for a doorway and Jon couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get the door open …
Corey: Hold me Jon, I’m scared!
Corey the Guamanian is the only one of us who had any previous earthquake experience, so it was he who told Jon to get into a doorway.
Meg: I think we’re moving.
Meg was on the soccer field with the kids too.
John: hey guys, sorry I’m late!
John DiTillo wasn’t actually in Haiti on January 12th. He was a volunteer last year, and was safe at home in Hanibal, Missouri when the earthquake happened here. A month later, he had dropped everything at home and was back in Haiti. He’s picked up classes for volunteers who have since gotten involved in more time consuming outside of school projects. More importantly, he was a much needed shot of energy and enthusiasm at a time when we were getting pretty tired. Now he’s decided to stay on past June, and will return to LCS next fall as well. What a blessing.
About a month after the earthquake I started hearing an expression in Kreyol that sort of freaked me out a little at first, but which I have since come to understand and genuinely appreciate. One day in class I asked where a student was, and the response came, “anba dekonb” … under the rubble. I think she was really only in the bathroom or something. Subsequently, questions about “where’s your pen,” “has anyone seen my eraser,” and “where’s the truck” are all met with the same joking response … “under the rubble.” Now there’s even a Haitian DJ who mixed an upbeat tune that says, “put me under the rubble … pull me out from the rubble” and people around here sing it incessantly. It makes perfect sense to me now. Haitians are so accustomed to tragedy, but also love to laugh so much, that it’s only right that eventually there would be a collective national joke about the latest tragedy. We wrote a haiku, and they make morose jokes about being buried under the rubble. It’s the same thing really.
The first two lines are:
Seven point zero
What the hell is going on?
The five syllable final lines are as follows … with a little explanation of each person’s earthquake experience:
Betsy: Get under the couch!
I’ve already explained that my somewhat appropriate and sort of insane instinct was to climb under the couch in our common room to wait for the shaking to stop
Mary: Should we not get out?
Mary was with me and Kristen upstairs, and while her inclination to get the hell out was probably better than mine to climb under the couch … we didn’t go anywhere.
Kristen: Please stop shaking now.
I’d say this one’s self explanatory
Elissa: Uh oh … coconuts!
She was outside walking among the mango and coconut trees and incredibly, her first thought was what would happen if one fell on her head. If you’ve never seen a coconut fall to the ground, it could kill you.
Peter: Incinerator?
He was outside dumping a wheelbarrow full of trash into the incinerator when the cinderblock walls starting moving. He thought the incinerator walls themselves were about to fall. Miraculously, only a few of the blocks actually did fall.
Samanthaa: Uh guys, get out now!
She was also near the incinerator with Peter and ran with the kids on the soccer field toward the center of the soccer field, away from the walls that were waving and crumbling.
Jon: Don’t push, pull instead.
Jon and Corey were making dinner in the kitchen and had a huge pot of water boiling on the stove. Amazingly, it didn’t completely fall off the stove. They ran for a doorway and Jon couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get the door open …
Corey: Hold me Jon, I’m scared!
Corey the Guamanian is the only one of us who had any previous earthquake experience, so it was he who told Jon to get into a doorway.
Meg: I think we’re moving.
Meg was on the soccer field with the kids too.
John: hey guys, sorry I’m late!
John DiTillo wasn’t actually in Haiti on January 12th. He was a volunteer last year, and was safe at home in Hanibal, Missouri when the earthquake happened here. A month later, he had dropped everything at home and was back in Haiti. He’s picked up classes for volunteers who have since gotten involved in more time consuming outside of school projects. More importantly, he was a much needed shot of energy and enthusiasm at a time when we were getting pretty tired. Now he’s decided to stay on past June, and will return to LCS next fall as well. What a blessing.
About a month after the earthquake I started hearing an expression in Kreyol that sort of freaked me out a little at first, but which I have since come to understand and genuinely appreciate. One day in class I asked where a student was, and the response came, “anba dekonb” … under the rubble. I think she was really only in the bathroom or something. Subsequently, questions about “where’s your pen,” “has anyone seen my eraser,” and “where’s the truck” are all met with the same joking response … “under the rubble.” Now there’s even a Haitian DJ who mixed an upbeat tune that says, “put me under the rubble … pull me out from the rubble” and people around here sing it incessantly. It makes perfect sense to me now. Haitians are so accustomed to tragedy, but also love to laugh so much, that it’s only right that eventually there would be a collective national joke about the latest tragedy. We wrote a haiku, and they make morose jokes about being buried under the rubble. It’s the same thing really.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Una Playa Bonita … y Una Presidente Por Favor!
On our first day at the resort near Santo Domingo, I kept laughing to myself thinking, “we are the ideal resort guests … because we will love EVERYTHING!” Did we throw a fit that our shower didn’t have any water for an hour or so? Nope. Were we annoyed that one of the restaurants was closed one night? Nope. We loved everything. The fancy lobby, the ocean view from our rooms (even though we had to crane our necks to the right a bit), the endless buffet, the waiters who came around and refilled our café con leche all morning, the free (I mean already paid for) cocktails … and the forks. Seriously, we were all just pretty excited to have total access to any kind of silverware we wanted at any moment of the day or night. At LCS our forks and spoons have the irritating habit of disappearing, so we end up eating spaghetti with spoons, and drinking soup with a quarter cup measuring cup. Needless to say, the endless supply of forks was pretty great. But mostly what we loved was the total relaxation of it. We didn’t have to do anything except enjoy the picturesque beach and the beautiful, friendly people. I’ve never done the “all inclusive” thing before, and I don’t think I would want to do it for a whole week, but for three days it was perfect.
After the resort we took the bus north to the Samana Peninsula, to a place called Playa Bonita. And yes, it was. There we stayed at a small hotel on a dirt road across the street from a very different, but equally beautiful beach. This one had rougher waves, but even softer sand. And there was no loud music, or people selling things, or free drinks … just the beach. We walked an hour into the little town nearby, bought sandwiches from an Italian grocery store, and rode on the backs of motorcycles back at night. We went on a horseback riding trip through mountain trails to a place called “cascada limon” where we jumped off a 30 foot ledge into the waterfall’s pool below. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ridden a horse in my life, and I’m SURE I’ve never been on a galloping horse. It was terrifying / awesome … but mostly awesome.
Then we scored a reasonably cheap taxi ride back to Santo Domingo (avoiding a two and half hour bus ride all together) and arrived in the capital at about noon on Friday. We stayed at a little hotel run by a German man in the zona colonial, and for the next three days I just kept thinking about Europe. There are cafes with outdoor seating, and people just sit there smoking for hours. There are motorcycles everywhere. Little kids chase pigeons in plazas in front of 500 year old churches. Only it was better than Europe because seriously, Dominicans are way more beautiful than Europeans, and it was a whole lot cheaper. We spent the days walking a lot, enjoying the freedom of being in a city. I drank lots of coffee drinks in outdoor cafes, and struck up conversations with anyone wearing a Red Sox of Yankees cap, which was lots of people.
Santo Domingo was lovely for the mix of uniquely Dominican things and the comforts of home. I went to Easter Mass at a tiny church with about 40 people in it, and instead of the Handel Alleluia and brass quintet (my usual Easter routine) there was a lady with a tambourine and about five nuns singing with her. A good reminder that, as much as I love the music, it’s not all about the music. Then for Easter dinner we did the only thing any self respecting Americans who have been in Haiti for 8 months would do … we went to McDonalds. I think a few of the boys almost cried with joy. I haven’t had a quarter pounder with cheese in years, but wow, that was tasty. Our last night, we planned to go watch the Red Sox and Yankees at a sports bar with a big screen TV, but instead stumbled upon a neighborhood dance party. We spent the evening with a few hundred people dancing Merengue and Bachata in the street while a live band and some old dudes (who could really sing) kept the crowd moving for hours. Instead of bar food we ate deep fried street food, but of course still enjoyed more than our share of the DR’s finest brew, Presidente. And much to my delight, there was a TV outside that was showing the Sox and Yankees, so all night long, I had lots of opportunities to trash talk in Spanish. How exactly do you say “Yankees suck!” in Spanish? Never quite nailed that one down. It was a perfect end to our ten day break.
The whole thing reminded me how much I love to travel. On this trip I spoke more Italian than I have in ten years (who knew there were so many Italians settling in the DR?) and I got to freak out lots of Haitians who did NOT expect the whitest person they’d ever seen to speak Spanish let alone Kreyol. I loved haggling with cab drivers, and negotiating very, VERY badly with an art dealer. Whatever. I don’t care if I overpaid. I love this painting and I feel pretty good about putting my money into the local economy. I love setting out for dinner with the plan to eat at a place recommended in a guide book only to find something way better on the way. It’s just all so fun. Can someone figure out how I can do that for a living?
Now we’re back to Haiti and LCS is up and running without missing a beat. Today, April 6, was the first official school day in Port au Prince since January 12th. The government encouraged the schools which are able to open, and there were kids in uniform all over town. We had 318 kids this morning, closer and closer to our pre-earthquake number. Today one of my absolute favorite kids was back to school for the first time. Rose Celine is about 17, and is one of the sweetest, smiley-est kids I’ve ever known. In the hours after the earthquake, hers was one of the terrified faces that drove home for me how serious this whole thing was. Gone was her smile – and the tears on her face and fear in her eyes is an image I’ll never forget. Then the next day she was gone, and I’ve wondered how she is for almost three months now. So I was so happy today to see her there in my first period Spanish class, looking a little overwhelmed but smiling nonetheless. Vacation was wonderful, but Rose Celine is back to school, so I better be here too!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Rainpocalypse
I know that people in the DC area lived through several feet of snow this winter, the so called snowpocalypse, and that my New England family and friends experienced 10 inches of rain last weekend and are still pumping out flooded basements. This morning, we had a rain phenomenon like nothing that has ever happened in my time here. It rained during school hours. Insert foreboding, dramatic music here.
The rainy season has begun again, which means that it rains almost every night at about 7 for a few hours, or for a while just before dawn. But it always stops by about 6 or 6:30 am, just as we’re all going outside to eat breakfast and get ready for class. This morning, it just kept raining, and literally, this was the first time in my six months here that we have had rain during school hours. If you think about most American schools, rain is no big deal. The buildings are enclosed, and once the kids get off the bus, or out of the car and run in from outside, they’ll be dry for the rest of the day. Not so much here. We have 2 classrooms that are literally outside under trees. We’re using five tents whose floors consist of a tarp over a dirt soccer field. Windows are wide open. There’s not very good drainage. We all have to walk outside to get from class to class. Oh, and we all wear sandals most days.
I of course had my first two classes of the day in one of the muddy tents. Unfortunately we HAD to open the window flaps or we would all have suffocated from the heat, but then the rain came inside. Lucky for me, I’ve been through many years of snowy days at school, so I knew enough to just let the kids spew whatever they needed to say about the rain for a while before delving into any even remotely academic work. It wasn’t pretty, but we survived. The pictures above are from the rainy morning assembly. You can’t actually tell how many kids are under that one umbrella unless you count the feet. I think there are 12 feet. The highlight of the morning however was when staff erupted into a spontaneous dance party in the rain as the kids sang the school song. That helped improve some people’s attitudes …
But in all our joking and laughing about the rain, and the inconvenience of having horrifically dirty feet all day from running around in the mud, I tried not to lose sight of the fact that there are still hundreds of thousands of people living outside in this country. Their tents generally aren’t as nice and waterproof as our classroom tents, and they don’t all have dry buildings to go into to dry off. It’s still going to be a long road for so many of them.
So what else is new?
Louverture Cleary people are doing some really amazing things out there right now, while the rest of us are holding down the fort with the kids at school.
Patrick Moynihan and Corey (one of the precocious 22 year olds around here) have been working with Catholic Relief Services and a few other agencies to open an 80 bed rehab clinic for earthquake related surgical patients. In the first days after the earthquake, there were so many amputations and some pretty incredible surgeries that happened at so many different facilities, with so many different visiting medical teams. But then those patients all went home, or to tent cities, and now the calf muscle brilliantly grafted to some other part of the leg is atrophying, and the incision sites are getting infected. So, this rehab clinic will coordinate the post surgical medical care, as well as social welfare (including helping to secure housing.) It’s an amazing project that many LCS graduates will have important roles in – as doctors, translators, drivers, and social workers. Corey and Patrick have been running all over town for weeks to make this happen, and the first post surgery patient transfers happened this week. The clinic should serve more than 500 patients in the next six months.
People have donated so much money to our relief fund, and the work of helping our staff and neighbors rebuild is in full swing. LCS staff have fixed pieces of several houses,, making them inhabitable again, and are almost done with a completely new home construction for a neighbor whose mud house was totally destroyed. Meghan, another volunteer, is the finance manager for these relief funds, and has taken responsibility for keeping track of spending, and paying our team of laborers from the neighborhood every week. In the meantime, she’s learning how to build houses, which is also pretty cool since she’s planning to study architecture in the near future.
And since the earthquake, we’ve stepped up our work with some of the neighborhood children in desperate need of supervision and care during the day. In the fall, we had our afternoon lunch and play time for 40 – 50 kids, but we realized that this wasn’t nearly enough for some. A few weeks after the earthquake, we realized that a few kids were missing. Sadly, two parents in the neighborhood had decided that they simply couldn’t care for their children anymore and had given them away to an “orphanage.” Imagine the desperation that prompts a parent to do that … It took several days of asking questions and searching to find the children, and as we feared, they were in a totally unregulated and unsanitary situation. It seems that people were basically collecting children, then soliciting money from foreigners to help renovate their “orphanage.” One can only imagine what they planned on doing with the children they had collected. In this whole ordeal, I met the absolute shadiest human being I have ever met, a man who would not tell us where the kids were, and refused to let anyone – even their mother – go to see them. Scary. Anyway, after a few days Christina Moynihan and a few of the drivers and security guys managed to literally rescue 5 children from this so-called orphanage. Unfortunately, their parents were still unwilling / unable to fully care for them, so we basically started a full day childcare program at school. Now Kristen, the volunteer with the elementary ed background, and three of the Haitian staff are teaching and caring for about 10 of the youngest neighborhood kids most in need of care during the day. Then they go home and stay with their families at night. It’s been amazing to see the transformation in some of these kids. They were sick and scared and only wanted to be held a few weeks ago, now they’re running around throwing balls at mango trees with the older kids trying to score a juicy snack.
We’re still not “officially” having school, though we never really stopped having school either. With almost three hundred kids and most of the teachers back, this place is starting to feel more and more normal, which is of course, a good thing for everyone. But for me a weird consequence of all that routine, is that I’m getting kind of bored. I’m back to teaching Spanish, and still overseeing – though not continually retooling – the academic schedule, and supervising cleanup and study, and teaching some kids Italian, and playing with the little neighborhood kids … all the things I was doing last fall. I found myself getting bored this week, and to be honest, a little jealous of the people who are out there working on the more exciting things. I knew that the adrenaline of the earthquake and its immediate aftermath would die off sooner or later as the work became less heroic and more routine, and that then the real work would begin. Well, here we are. I just keep telling myself that it’s my role now, to just help keep things running smoothly here so that other people can get out there and rebuild Haiti.
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