Nope, this is not a description of the latest construction project or earthquake recovery project in Haiti. This is what’s going on in my parents’ neighborhood in Arlington. As I flew home on Sunday, the flight was held up over Providence for about 45 minutes waiting for weather to clear in Boston. Then when I landed and called my dad, he explained that a tornado – what turned out to be a “macroburst” – had hit their neighborhood while I was in the air. There were more than ten huge trees down, some of which fell on cars and houses. Their house was OK, but there were two huge trees from neighbors’ yards now covering their backyard. Oh, and there was no electricity. So I woke up on June 6 and got ready to leave Haiti in the dark, and arrived home and ate dinner and started to unpack in the dark too. Who needs electricity anyway? I told some neighbors that I don’t know how to operate a chainsaw, but if anyone had a machete I’d be happy to help. I don’t think they really got it.
Since Sunday night I’ve been busy, but also just really enjoying some of the small things. I started an apartment search on Monday that seemed dismally depressing at first, but which turned around on Wednesday morning when the Craigslist gods smiled upon me and I beat a kagillion other people to the punch on the perfect Davis Square apartment. Lease signed, checks written Wednesday, and I can move in July 1. I’ve spent some time at PHA beginning to sort out exactly what my job will be next year, but mostly just hanging out with kids and adults, catching up, and wondering how it is that ninth grade boys can grow six inches in a year. Amazing. I’ve done a lot of walking around in this unseasonably chilly, but brilliantly sunny week. It’s such a pleasure to be able to just go where I want to go, and no one even notices me. Anonymity is not really possible for me in Haiti. I’m enjoying iced coffees and burritos from Ana’s Taqueria and stop lights and the T and the view of Copley Square through the giant glass windows as I came down the escalator at Copley Place.
I’m off to Chicago this afternoon to join some of my favorite people for the “Tour de Farms,” the annual fundraising ride for the National MS Association. We’ve done this ride a few times in honor of Michael John Myette’s father who has been battling MS for many years. Now we’re riding for Erika too, his wife and one of my very closest friends from Notre Dame, who was diagnosed with MS this fall. Yet another reminder that our own life plans amount to so little compared with God’s plan, and that there is no shortage people in anyone’s life in need love and support. Really, you don’t have to go to Haiti to find someone to help.
It will be a wonderful weekend, I’m sure, despite how terrifyingly out of shape I am. I rode 20 miles on Tuesday and it was a little rough. 150 over two days? Right … I’ll be fine. Which reminds me, if any of you want to make a contribution to our team, The Loose Sprockets, here’s my fundraising page: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/BetsyBowman
After this weekend trip, I’ll enjoy a quiet summer, I hope … moving into a new apartment, getting settled in a new job, catching up with old friends, spending time with family and welcoming new nieces and nephews into the world. In August I hope to return to Haiti for a week to help the new group of volunteers get settled into their teaching roles. Then school starts in September and a whole new adventure begins. Maybe I’ll update this blog again with updates from Haiti in the future, but they certainly won’t be so frequent. Thanks to all the people I know and all the people I don’t know who have been reading this and even sharing it with more people. I hope you’ve enjoyed it – and that you continue to keep Haiti in your thoughts and prayers and ACTIONS in the years to come. It’s going to be a long road.
If you want to read another interesting blog – here’s the blog of the PHA students visiting Guatemala for the month of June. They arrived just before the volcano erupted and the torrential rains began. Now their trip has changed form a bunch of kids coming to see the world and learn Spanish to a bunch of kids helping to dig houses out of the mud. Sound familiar? www.juniorjourney.blogspot.com
All the best,
Betsy
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Graduation
It was beautiful. There's not much to say really that these pictures don't already express. There were a lot of joyful kids and families and the whole thing went off without a hitch. It was a wonderful way to spend my last day at Louverture Cleary School.
Snapshots of the last weeks
Back in March I was a little bored … not anymore! May has been busy and hectic and at times stressful and irritating, but also fun and joyful. A few snapshots of LCS in May …
Construction: The maintenance guys have been busy. They’ve rebuilt the front wall surrounding the school that came down in the earthquake, and have almost completed three other damaged walls. It’s amazing to watch them work. They had to break the old foundation to pour a new one, and there are no jack hammers for that. They did it with sledgehammers and pick axes. Then they had to pour the concrete, and there are no cement mixers. They do it by hand – mixing the sand, gravel, cement and water, stirring it on the ground, then shoveling it into wheelbarrows to transport it to the site. And did I mention that in the middle of the day it’s been in the high nineties for the past few weeks? In all of these projects, students have been working too. This whole place was constructed by this community, so students have always been involved in construction projects here. They’re so proud when they see the wall that they helped to build.
Schedules … again: Apparently it is my calling in life to coordinate school schedules. This has often been part of my job at PHA, and post-earthquake it has been one of my major responsibilities at LCS. This past week required coordinating the final exam schedules for the oldest students whose school year is over, while maintaining the normal schedule for the rest of the kids. Now I’m working on the schedule for the extended school year through June – though I won’t be here to see it happen. The graduates will come back in June to work with their professors to prepare for the national exams that they must pass later in the summer. I was working on their schedule today and then one of the kids tonight just said, “wait … we have to be here at 8? They told us 9 …” I really am the last to know anything around here. Back to the drawing board.
Liz’s visit: When I decided to come to Haiti last year, Liz Murray, my long time PHA colleague and most recent roommate, proposed coming to visit. She and I both know that chances to visit Haiti are few and far between, and April vacation seemed like the perfect time. Then … plans had to change. It looked like she wouldn’t be able to come at all since flights were not easy to book, and were not cheap, but then she figured it out somehow and spent five days at LCS last week. Not surprisingly – to anyone who knows Liz – she was hanging out with the 11 year olds in about ten minutes and was doing crowd control for the kids waiting in line outside the “store” within her first four hours in Haiti. She came with all kinds of supplies and goodies for kids (and some for the grown-ups too … if you’re ever wondering, frozen Toll House chocolate chip cookie dough will survive a flight to Haiti!) Mostly it was just so wonderful to have someone who knows me so well in my normal life witness my Haiti life.
A fresh coat of paint: Classes ended Wednesday and the younger students went home, and then the graduates returned to campus to do all the prep to make the school look beautiful for their families to see it on Saturday. It’s amazing what motivated kids can accomplish in a few hours! With only a little supervision from adults, they painted every flat surface they could get a paintbrush on, and the school buildings, benches, and walls look beautiful. They’re also painting their class mural, on the new front wall whose plaster was barely dry this morning. Their mural includes the names of the 41 graduates and their class name “Odyssey” with an incredible image of a ship at sea. Again, talent combined with motivation and a deadline yields some incredible results. And what were the adults doing while he kids painted? We made 20 cakes and 24 lasagnas for the graduation lunch. The cooks are making the “real” food, but we decided to pitch in where we could!
Goodbyes: The kids here see volunteers come and go every year, and to be honest, I expected them to be a little guarded in their relationships with us as a result of these annual goodbyes. But they’re not guarded at all, and their farewells were so sweet and their thank you’s so sincere. I’m so happy that five of the ten volunteers will be returning next fall, and two will stay until the end of the extended school year in early July. I think it will be so good for these kids to have some consistency, and as the years go on, to still have people around who shared the earthquake experience with them. When they ask why I’m not staying, I tell them that I promised some other kids I’d come back after a year, and that answer seems to satisfy them. But I’m dropping some pretty strong hints that I intend to visit in the not so distant future … maybe with some of those other kids I know.
Tet anba – upside down: We love to do things a little backwards at LCS – turning conventional things on their head. On the last day of class, that meant the staff showing up at the morning meeting wearing kids’ uniforms. We each conspired with a student to borrow their uniforms, then marched out in a line to stand in front of the kids at their daily 8 am meeting. It was pretty hilarious. Some of the staff members literally WERE LCS students a year ago, so they looked pretty normal in their green plaid skirts, but some of us looked pretty fabulously ridiculous. This uniform just does not look good on most white people. It was a wonderful moment of levity in a busy week full of exams and grading.
So many generous gifts
After the earthquake, the students at Montrose School (where I went to school from sixth through twelfth grade) raised about 2000 dollars for LCS through “coin wars” and a benefit concert. Though they understood why it was critical to just send money, they also wanted to give some kind of gift to the students directly. So they worked with their art teacher to create eight beautiful posters that represent LCS and Haiti and HOPE. They used some of my photos to get ideas and others just used their imaginations, and the results were amazing. Liz checked the huge tube of posters as her luggage, and on Thursday afternoon we spread them out on the basketball court for the kids to see. They loved them. They loved the representations of themselves and their school and appreciated the thoughtfulness of the artists so much. They also loved reading the artists’ biographies so much, through which they learned things like what lacrosse is and what after school program means and which year in school are sophomores. Almost immediately they suggested making a gift in return for their new faraway friends, and in just two afternoons, a little crew of four 16 year old boys created four drawings for the girls at Montrose as a way to say thank you. I don’t know … I just can’t help thinking that these are the kind of experiences that change kids’ whole view of the world and their own place in it.
Earlier in the spring, Prospect Hill Academy, the school where I have worked for the past 8 years, announced that they would contribute about $3000 of their “PHA fund for Haiti” to the Haitian Project and Louverture Cleary School. This money will be used to underwrite the programs within the school that support the neighborhood children who are too young for LCS. Presently, there are eleven children in full time day care / preschool, about 50 who come for lunch and play time each afternoon, and about 25 school aged children who do not attend school consistently are attending classes here taught by LCS students. I think this program is such a perfect match for PHA. It’s about kids helping kids, and about reaching out to the community outside of one’s own little world. I hope that one of these years some PHA kids will get to come here and see it for themselves!
And at least once a week I receive an e-mail from a friend or family member reporting that some other friend, or a local elementary school, or somebody’s church had a fundraiser and raised a hundred or three thousand dollars of the Haitian Project. It’s amazing to see how many people have actually followed through on their well intentioned promises to do something to help. If this many people actually stay engaged in Haiti’s progress in the critical months and years ahead, then I am truly hopeful that Haiti can rebuild itself into a better country. It’s going to be a long road though, and the work has only just begun.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Odyssey Class
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.
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.
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.
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