Apparently I share posts from other people now instead of sharing my own thoughts. But honestly I like what other people have to say. The following is an email from one of the singer/songwriters of one of my favorite bands Over the Rhine. Linford has an amazing way with words and their music is amazing. I strongly encourage all of you to go out and buy their music today and maybe support them on their next project. I can guarantee that you will like their music.
Here you go...from Karin and Linford and Over the Rhine
Hello extended musical family,
Might want to pour a cup of something good and settle in. You know it always takes me at least four pages to say a proper hello.
Hope you are well.
Many thanks to all of you who were able to join us at our recent concerts down South and beyond: many memorable moments, some very enjoyable evenings. Thank you. And thanks for letting us try out some of our new songs. We’re heading out again on Saturday for a sweet little run (KY, MN, IL, MO, IN). Hope to see you.
We have some big news.
Spring has come to Ohio. The grass is green, the silver maples have their leaves, our part of the earth has tilted back toward the sun, which seems to take pleasure now in drenching the house in morning light. If you stand on the porch, close your eyes, turn your face toward the sun and let it shine on your eyelids, if you breathe deeply, it feels like someone is pouring a pitcher of light directly into your soul.
The birds are drunk on spring, flirting, nesting, singing. Our lone tupelo tree has new eager buds that make it look like a candelabra full of tiny green candles. My mother says if you pay attention it’s like watching the world being created all over again right in front of your eyes.
Karin and I sit on the porch swing, and we often wonder aloud: Could we share this? What if we could use our little farm as a creative gathering place for the occasional outdoor concert, a songwriting workshop, a place where we could help other young artists find their way forward? Hopefully, we can continue to put the infrastructure in place for that to happen. But that’s a conversation for a different day…
Yes, we are feeling adventurous. (Maybe adventure is simply paying attention to the part of you that wants to be created all over again.)
We are feeling like we want to invite you along.
We have some big news.
For the first time ever, this coming May 17, Karin and I are planning to travel to the West Coast to make an Over the Rhine record. We are going to work with producer Joe Henry and an amazing cast of characters. We are going to make a record that we can’t quite imagine. Hopefully it will be a little bit strange and a little bit wonderful.
Hopefully we will, “Blow the seams out of the songs...” (JH)
One thing for sure: We are going to be surprised.
There are at least three reasons why we still want to make music:
One: We believe making music has something to do with what we were put on this earth to do. If we leave our songs alone, they call to us until we come back to where we belong. When we live in the sweet spot of that calling, it gives others (you?) permission to discover the sweet spot of your own calling and live there.
Two: Both Karin and I have had occasion to bury loved ones. When we put loved ones in the ground, we find that we lose interest in acquiring stuff. We know we can’t take it with us when we go. No, it’s not about acquiring, rather it’s about what we are able to leave behind. That’s what gives life meaning: doing work that you can leave behind, your personal token of gratitude to the world in return for the gift of getting to be alive in it. (We believe the opportunity to make this record with Mr. Henry has everything to do with what we will leave behind.)
Three: Presence. There is a beautiful passage of scripture that made an impact on me as a child that I have never forgotten. Jesus said that if you help someone in need, someone hungry or naked or thirsty or imprisoned, if you are able to be present with them and soothe them in some way, it’s the same as if God was hungry or naked or thirsty or imprisoned and you found a way to help God.
There is so much need in this beautiful broken world it can be overwhelming. Maybe the most profoundly satisfying thing about making music for the last 20 years is we have watched people invite our music to be part of the big moments of their lives – a slow dance in the kitchen with someone who changed everything, a walk down the aisle at a wedding, a child being born... Unfortunately, big moments also occur during seasons when it feels like everything is going horribly wrong. We all need music during those dark times too – I know I do. It’s always humbling and amazing to learn that our music can be present in those too-difficult-too-imagine times. In some small way, through our music, it feels like we get to be present too, even when that is physically impossible. We get to be there in spirit.
That’s enough to keep us coming back.
That and all the sex and drugs…
I’m just kiddin’.
One dilemma with doing something creative for a long time is it can become a bit predictable. If an artist doesn’t push forward into fresh territory, doesn’t continue to risk something, doesn’t seek out new people who can teach her something unexpected, help her find a new way into the center of it, something vital begins to atrophy.
Karin and I have been writing our new songs for a good while now. I suppose many of them are understated glimpses into the people we are (so far) and the people we long to be and the difference that lies between.
Songs are little holders of ideas and images and questions that we want to remember. Sometimes the songs simply gather together some particular details of our life here on the farm. The songs teach us what we care about, and on a good day surprise us. Sometimes the new songs soothe us during our own dark moments. Sometimes they try to lend a helping hand.
Underneath our writing, there is a hunger and belief in possibility: the possibility that the “best” Over the Rhine record hasn’t been made yet. The possibility that our best work is still out there waiting for us. The possibility that we can still grow…
With this in mind, we asked ourselves, If we could make our next record with any producer/ally, someone who could help us record a project that we can’t quite imagine and envision (we want to be at least a little bit surprised as I’m sure you do), who would that person be?
We thought of some of our favorite moments on records we had heard in the last several years.
A name that quickly rose to the top of our list is songwriter and producer Joe Henry.
Joe has been quietly making records (well not that quietly, he has won at least two Grammy’s) that don’t sound like other records being made in 2010. They are a little bit dark and cinematic and funky and unpredictable. It seems like he loves to help performers who have already covered a lot of miles – people like Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Solomon Burke, Louden Wainwright, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Mose Allison – rediscover the soul of what they do in new light.
But maybe even more importantly, Joe is a fine songwriter. We were excited about the possibility of getting his perspective on the actual writing.
Well, it’s always a long shot when you start at the top of your list, but to make a long (amazing) story short enough to fit into this letter, Joe has fully embraced the idea of helping us make this next Over the Rhine record. The ensuing conversation has been wonderful. We have discovered some friends in common, and I think we will discover even more common ground along the way as we discover the next chapter of the band together. We are even writing a song together that keeps us up at night in a good way.
Here’s the thing: this is the point in the process where early in Over the Rhine’s career a record label would have stepped forward and offered to put up the money to make this record. The label would then have taken outright somewhere between 80-90% of all the money the record made (your money). Out of the 10-20% that was our share, they then would have reimbursed themselves all the money they advanced us to make the recording possible, plus many other costs associated with its release. (This felt sort of like paying down your mortgage after the bank had already figured out how to keep 80% of your paycheck. And then the big surprise waiting at the end: after you paid off your mortgage, they still owned your house! That is, the label, after it was all said and done, owned the record forever.)
For years, most musicians went with the above, because the labels controlled distribution, and if you wanted to get your records in a record store… well, this is probably all old news to you.
For much of our career, we (and countless others) tried with varying degrees of success to find creative ways around this model. It made many of us fiercely independent. We felt we had to break free, come what may. (We should mention there are good people still working at record labels, who are trying to get good music released, but unfortunately, it feels like most labels have been all but devoured from the top down…)
Several years ago, Karin and I turned down several offers, cashed in all of our personal resources, found an investor to help us get started, and formed our own label, Great Speckled Dog, which we 100% own. We secured our own national distribution deal.
When it comes to our music: We are now in the driver’s seat. (Our label, GSD, is named after our Great Dane Elroy, of course: Him old, but him baby.)
Our first chapter with our very own Great Speckled Dog Records was the release of The Trumpet Child and Snow Angels. We learned a lot. Thanks to you, those projects supported us, and our touring ensemble, for almost 3 years. The Trumpet Child is on pace to eventually out sell any record released on our behalf by a label in the last 20 years. It has been a rare blessing, to see the audience for our music continue to steadily grow.
But now we find ourselves very much at the end of an album cycle winding down. It’s time for the next step. It’s time for a new Over the Rhine record.
Friends, the good news is this:
In 2010, there is no middleman.
It’s just us and you.
So, for the first time in our career, we are simply going to appeal directly to you, the people who care about Over the Rhine’s music, and ask if you will partner directly with us in making this new record.
We have a little less than four weeks to raise the money. It’s an ambitious step for us, but it feels right.
Whatever funds we are able to raise will go directly to our label, Great Speckled Dog, to help take care of this new music we will make. It will be used to help cover actual recording costs, and give the songs the best send-off into the world that we can afford. (We do plan to see the record distributed nationally and internationally.)
Close friends are always surprised when we begin to tally the costs involved in getting an Over the Rhine record recorded and out the door. We’ll spare you a full report, but generating a well-made thing – it does add up.
If you’re willing to help us make this record, we will offer our gratitude in all sorts of ways. (We’re not asking for something for nothing. We had a little fun and came up with a whole range of options you can grin at.)
If you can spare $15 now, we’ll make sure you have your beautifully packaged CD one month before the official release date, along with a personal thank you on Over the Rhine’s website, 3 bonus tracks and a small surprise when the CD ships.
We will not presume, but if you are able and willing to give way more than $15, we will gratefully accept, give you any number of special treats in return, and put the funds to good use to make this next chapter of Over the Rhine possible. We will hopefully have more than a little fun along the way. We will keep you posted.
Once or twice in my life I got to see my Amish relatives get together with friends and neighbors and frame a barn on a Saturday. This doesn’t feel all that different to me. It’s always humbling to admit you need help, but if you find the courage, it creates a space for a community to come together.
Maybe making this new record together is just that: An opportunity to come together to leave something behind, a little token of gratitude to the world for the gift of being alive in it. We will write our names on the music (and yours if you’re game) and let people know we were here. We tried to pour a little pitcher of light into the soul of the world.
We hope you will join us.
Curious?
Walk down this rabbit hole to get all the details:
http://www.overtherhine.com/makearecord.php
Love from Nowhere,
Linford and Karin
PS:
Karin and I will be selling a few of our worldly possessions to help make this possible, including (some vintage) musical instruments and (some vintage) recording equipment that we no longer use regularly, some of which we utilized to record past Over the Rhine projects. Stay tuned if you’d like to own a little physical piece of OtR history.
PPS:
Please feel free to share this e-mail with family and friends. Leave a copy on the paint-splattered oak table next to works-in-progress. Line the rows of your flower beds with its pages, cover them with 2-3 inches of mulch and keep the weeds down. Slip a copy of the letter after scrawling the words “WHAT NEXT?!” in red ink on it into the LP jacket of The Trumpet Child as a sort of extended warning label. And finally, loosely line the Victorian birdcage with these pages edge to edge and let the white doves crap all night long.
PPPS:
We’ve had a heck of a time trying to keep up with e-mail. Sorry we haven’t been able to respond personally to more of you. But pls write to us. We do read all the mail. We would love to know your thoughts/ideas as we kick off the next 20 years. The address is still:
otrhine@aol.com
PPPPS:
To manage your subscription to the Over the Rhine newsletter please visit:
http://overtherhine.com/mailman/listinfo/otrannounce_overtherhine.com
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tanzania
Apparently I have been connected with people living internationally. This is from my cousin Meghan who is getting ready to leave Tanzania after almost two years. It is beautiful. All these emails from friends and family overseas has got me itching to leave. I am going to Honduras for 10 days in August. I can hardly wait.
Tutaonana Baadaye
With having lived in Africa for close to two years it is now time for
me to say goodbye. I will be boarding a plane headed to America with a
backpack filled with a ridiculous amount of memories, cheap souvenir
gifts, some loose change and a piece of my heart missing.
Although I am extremely saddened by my departure I am eager to
discover what my tomorrow will bring. What I do know is that I will
see my youngest and only brother getting married, I will move back to
the East Coast to live with Katie, Nick and my beautiful, little
nephew and I will start school in the summer for Nursing. Let’s just
hope that I have as much passion for Biology, Chemistry and Physiology
as I do for Tanzania. If this is not the case, I might be packing my
backpack once again. Being a crazy, seventy year old woman in Africa
with twenty adopted children has always sounded appealing.
It has been two wonderful years. It has been two amazing years. It has
been two extraordinary years.
Two years I will never forget.
I have woken up every morning to loud mosques, incredibly obnoxious
birds, screaming children and barking dogs. I have failed miserably in
learning Swahili. I have seen poverty and have been unable to help. I
have eaten little fish called dagaa and am sure to have tasted
mysterious meat in unknown dishes. I have shed countless tears of
frustration and happiness. I have worked ridiculously hard and have
played even harder. I have truly learned what it means to be selfless.
I have sat through a five hour church service that was spoken only in
Swahili. I have ridden every mode of transportation available in East
Africa and have enjoyed the camel on the beach the most. I have
memorized the nine stories of Bugando Hospital. I have boiled water
for endless hours and have accepted the fact that it will always be
brown. I have laughed from the belly. I have become a regular at the
Duka across the street. I have had my life philosophy tweaked, changed
and moulded by children all under the age of five. I have fallen in
love with a story about a girl, a boy and a box. I have watched the
most incredible sunsets from a tree fort overlooking Lake Victoria. I
have mastered the use of a drop hole. I have been a teacher but more
importantly I have been a student. I have befriended the worm in my
toe and have accepted his existence. I have been awakened by emotions
of sorrow, heartache, passion and helplessness. I have cursed bad
roads, dust, power outages, water shortages and body odor. I have
taught a man how to fish. I have never lost hope of saving the world
with my own two hands. I have learned how to cut a pineapple
perfectly. I have respected and appreciated deeply- the local women
who have endured hardship, tragedy and loss more then I will ever
know. I have lost a piece of my heart to the children, the culture and
the land of Tanzania.
I have watched my last sunset over the shores of Lake Victoria where
the dhow boats come to life and the city falls to sleep.
See you very soon.
Meg
If you have a minute- You should check out this short film...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sE_i_lWlAw
Tutaonana Baadaye
With having lived in Africa for close to two years it is now time for
me to say goodbye. I will be boarding a plane headed to America with a
backpack filled with a ridiculous amount of memories, cheap souvenir
gifts, some loose change and a piece of my heart missing.
Although I am extremely saddened by my departure I am eager to
discover what my tomorrow will bring. What I do know is that I will
see my youngest and only brother getting married, I will move back to
the East Coast to live with Katie, Nick and my beautiful, little
nephew and I will start school in the summer for Nursing. Let’s just
hope that I have as much passion for Biology, Chemistry and Physiology
as I do for Tanzania. If this is not the case, I might be packing my
backpack once again. Being a crazy, seventy year old woman in Africa
with twenty adopted children has always sounded appealing.
It has been two wonderful years. It has been two amazing years. It has
been two extraordinary years.
Two years I will never forget.
I have woken up every morning to loud mosques, incredibly obnoxious
birds, screaming children and barking dogs. I have failed miserably in
learning Swahili. I have seen poverty and have been unable to help. I
have eaten little fish called dagaa and am sure to have tasted
mysterious meat in unknown dishes. I have shed countless tears of
frustration and happiness. I have worked ridiculously hard and have
played even harder. I have truly learned what it means to be selfless.
I have sat through a five hour church service that was spoken only in
Swahili. I have ridden every mode of transportation available in East
Africa and have enjoyed the camel on the beach the most. I have
memorized the nine stories of Bugando Hospital. I have boiled water
for endless hours and have accepted the fact that it will always be
brown. I have laughed from the belly. I have become a regular at the
Duka across the street. I have had my life philosophy tweaked, changed
and moulded by children all under the age of five. I have fallen in
love with a story about a girl, a boy and a box. I have watched the
most incredible sunsets from a tree fort overlooking Lake Victoria. I
have mastered the use of a drop hole. I have been a teacher but more
importantly I have been a student. I have befriended the worm in my
toe and have accepted his existence. I have been awakened by emotions
of sorrow, heartache, passion and helplessness. I have cursed bad
roads, dust, power outages, water shortages and body odor. I have
taught a man how to fish. I have never lost hope of saving the world
with my own two hands. I have learned how to cut a pineapple
perfectly. I have respected and appreciated deeply- the local women
who have endured hardship, tragedy and loss more then I will ever
know. I have lost a piece of my heart to the children, the culture and
the land of Tanzania.
I have watched my last sunset over the shores of Lake Victoria where
the dhow boats come to life and the city falls to sleep.
See you very soon.
Meg
If you have a minute- You should check out this short film...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sE_i_lWlAw
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Haiti #3
Pou peyi a ka vin pi bel
So the country can be beautified
Dear Everybody,
Imagine me out of breath, bent at the waist with my hands on my knees, just arrived at your door, and grinning pink-faced as I pant, “Sorry I’m late.”
Because it’s been a while since I’ve written. Things have been, in a word, good. In a few more words:
The short term gets long
Palm tree forests/ imaginary lines slash history like a knife
Gold up in the trees
Chasing kids with a machete
The high and the low (uniforms, universities heat and humidity and so on)
A shout out to foutbòl and my arch nemeses
There have been peaks and valleys along the way as I navigate the Third World landscape. And of course part of what I love about all of it is that you can never know just what awaits you beyond the next rise in the horizon.
So, know that your buddy down in Haiti is alive and thriving, and hoping this finds you feeling well. Please pray for those who are exposed to the rain and
Go watch a sunrise.
Love,
John.
…
The short term gets long
You can make a compelling argument that the long-term answer to impoverished nations’ daunting development questions has to be education. Lots of people do. Right now in Haiti, however, putting a roof over people’s heads and food in their bellies is a priority. You can’t educate a corpse.
The Haitian Project formed a construction team not long after the earthquake, offering the double-whammy of employment to young men* from the neighborhood around LCS and immediate aid to those in need. My first week here in February, I led a team of students smashing up a fallen wall and transporting the rubble to lay as part of the foundation for a new home.
Upon that foundation, a tent was pitched. A family whose mud hut had collapsed during the quake lived there while the construction crew worked on building a sturdy, well-ventilated, beautiful (a veritable chateau compared to the sad sheet metal shacks you see everywhere) house for them.
Several weeks of hard work later, the house is ready to be lived in. While it is not yet equipped with the luxuries of electricity or running water, these things are envisioned for the future. It has an admirable front curb where people can sit and talk in the douceur of Caribbean evenings.
One of our American volunteers served as foreman and accountant for this and other work projects. With her increased rebuilding responsibilities she has needed to reallocate her time from the classroom to the worksites. So, I have taken over teaching religion to her Troisième (sophomore-aged) students.
That’s another reason why I came back here. To fill holes.
Some of my best lessons so far include: explaining how the three-leafed clover can be used to teach about the Trinity, and the glorious truth that “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patty’s Day”; asking students what they would do if they knew it was their last day on earth, and reminding them that Jesus spent it eating, sharing (himself) with his friends; making them memorize the prayer of Saint Francis, because it’s a good kind of thing to have in your head, I think.
Not insignificantly, I love classroom teaching. (Grading, not so much.) Setting foot back in the classroom has reminded me that I love it. That it’s what I do. So probably my vocation will have something to do with learning. We’ll see.
* These guys are my about age: able, hungry to work and help, but otherwise bereft of a job. Remember, Haiti has an unemployment rate around 80%. Lots of people with nothing to do but sit and wait for something, anything. THP gives them tools, and they are rebuilding their country. It almost seems simple sometimes, doesn’t it?
Palm tree forests/ imaginary lines slash history like a knife
We THP volunteers spent our nine-day Easter break in the Dominican Republic. It was a total phenomenonathon (= phenomenon + marathon). The bonfire on the beach; the motorcycle taxis in the milky neon blur of the tropical night (“Señor, mas rapido, por favor!”); the cliff-jumping into the waterfall after a galloping horse ride there (I felt like a cowboy, like Lawrence of Arabia); the fearsome force of the waves during a mid-night sea swim; the sun-accented tambourine Alleluias at the early-morning Easter Mass in the neighborhood church built in the time of Columbus; fudging enough Spanish to obtain cold beer and cheeseburgers from hole-in-the-wall cafés (going without transforms things, reveals the magic in them); stumbling upon the block-party meringue dancing next to the ruins of a 16th-century monastery and dancing with the pretty girl, getting to practice my French à la française; the long walks down foreign cobblestone streets and the hammock naps and the pigeons in the Cathedral plaza.
But those are stories best told over a café con leche, or a Cuba Libre.
What I want to tell you about is the way history shapes the earth. When you take a bus from Port-au-Prince to Santo Domingo, you ride out of a city with broken buildings and through an arid countryside freckled with mismatched shacks and skinny dogs passing by the window. The bus lurches and stutters along the pothole paradise of dirt “road.” There is a big lake to the left with trash in it and no commercial fishing, no water sports. There are deforested mountains to your right. There is a lot of dust everywhere.
You come to the border post, dismount the bus to stand in line in the sweaty customs hut, buy an overpriced Coke from the lady hawking them from the Igloo cooler on her head, and then get back on the bus for the four-hour home stretch.
There is an invisible line, but it has its signs. You start to see rows of houses made of wood. You can no longer see the ribs on the livestock and street dogs. All the billboards and placards are en español. The bus rolls smoothly along paved highways past towns laid out in grids and vast farms of sugarcane and plants that I don’t recognize. And, holy shit. There are forests of palm trees. So much green that it makes me want to cry.
As you approach Santo Domingo, it gets better/worse. There are overpasses, tunnels, sidewalks, gutters, functioning power lines, garbage trucks, suspension bridges. INFRASTRUCTURE.
About traveling to the DR after working for many months in Haiti: “It’s going to be totally awesome, except for the misgivings in the depths of our souls.”
Nothing can really prepare you for the shock of the stark contrast between the two nations. That two sides of the same island could be so different is mindboggling. That one side would thrive while the other struggles, suffers, and survives (just barely) is heartbreaking.
I’m no expert. I know that part of Haiti’s problem is that they won their independence too soon. They were never accepted by the international community—the USA couldn’t recognize Haiti as a legitimate republic because it was a black republic, and enslaving Africans was still an institution in the States. A country of revolutionaries couldn’t, or wouldn’t, accept a country of revolutionaries.
And there’s the problem of how they won their independence—the slaves eviscerated the land of every trace of their oppressors, which means that with the white man so went what he’d built. Plantations were razed to the ground. The fertile fields and evil system of labor that had made Haiti the richest colony in the hemisphere were destroyed, burned up, gone.
Things went from bad to worse. Power traded hands violently in a succession of corrupt leaders. Abuse and usurpation were standard for a long time.
…Sorry. It would be easy for me to get in over my head. Everyone should read up on the history of Haiti, as it tied to our own; its darkness is also our darkness.
A concise case-in-point: both the Dominican Republic had dictators. But in the DR, if you cut down a tree, they would cut off your head. In Haiti, the kleptocratic leaders and their thugs were more interested in stealing from the poor to fill their pockets than saving trees. Now they’re almost all gone. The trees.
Same ecology, different history.
What I’m trying to say is that the Dominican Republic is a poor country, but it is on its feet. It is a beautiful place to visit, fun to travel. It is a place that anyone with a little extra money saved up and looking to escape the crazy rigors of the rat race might want to go, and take the family. It’s just so sad that Haiti isn’t. So close and yet so, so far.
…
Guess what? While I was on the Spanish-speaking part of the island, I missed Haiti. Traveling and tasting is all good, and I can’t imagine a group of people more in need of a break than my fellow volunteers. But I could never sustain that way of life. My work is here at the school, to throw my weight into rebuilding. Simply, after a week of blowing off steam and recharging my soul-batteries, I found myself missing my students.
Also, my time in the DR gave me a renewed appreciation for our fresh drinking water at LCS. We have a well, and we have a chlorine-purification system. I pull the lever, and water flows. In the Dominican Republic, the scary-vast majority of potable water is obtained from plastic bottles. National Geographic recently did a special issue on H20. We could be fighting wars over it before too long.
In the end, I was glad to have a vacation. It reminded me of what I have here in Haiti.
Gold up in the trees
It can be any time of day, but let’s say it’s after the heat has worn off, when afternoon is tipping headlong into evening. The sun’s a sinking weight. An ember sighing itself to death.
I am still sweaty from teaching in the hot classroom tents, still dirty with soot and such from burning trash out along the road during afternoon cleanup. But I’m cooling off now as guitar chords catch on the breeze. Up in the rooftop garden, a handful of diligent students are strumming away on the six-strings. Seeing them make progress is a joy. And we still get some newcomers each week who struggle to make the guitar talk right.
“Fòk ou peze di. Si w pa peze, ou fè gita pete.”
“You have to press hard,” I tell them. “If you don’t press, you make the guitar fart.”
The garden where we play sits atop the roof of the chapel, at eye-level with the canopies of the mango trees. In the uppermost branches, there is gold.
From the ground, you can harvest the gold by launching a soccer or basketball up there. But sometimes they get stuck.
After enough failed attempts, a member of the security staff might take pity on you and climb the tree, amazingly dexterously gracefully, and grab one for you.
It is a bit easier from the rooftop garden. The treetops are right there. You can take a rake and, reaching out almost too far, harvest the gold by swatting among the leaves.
The gold is usually green. If it’s dark green, it’s not good yet. But when it starts to turn lighter and with a hint of orange, it’s ready.
Adam, a Philo student, wanders up the steps into guitar club wielding a long pole. His eyes meet mine and he gives a mischievous half-smile. I nod.
The unspoken agreement is this: I let him hunt for mangoes even though he probably shouldn’t be doing that, as long as he gives me one.
After a few minutes, success. He tosses me a mango, and I set it by my guitar case for later.
Later. The dinner bell rings, and guitar club is done for the day. The sun is almost down. It’s last burnt oranges and raspberry rays are dripping from the leaves of the trees. I bite into my mango and peel away the skin, sink my teeth into its fruit.
Oh, how tropically sticky sweet,
Bleeding golden on my fingertips,
Blessing my chin and hands and cheeks,
Sunset fibers singing in my teeth.
Chasing kids with a machete
When I returned from Easter break, Zamy (roommate) had several coconuts stashed under the desk we share. “Have one any time, just ask Mathieu.”
It took me all week to seize the day. Friday morning I had a break between classes. I went to the tool depot and grabbed a machete. Mathieu, one of the old apple-cheeked smiling security guards pierced the coconut with four deft blows, carved a hole in the top through which to drink, and handed it to me.
Yum.
The last drop drunk, I handed it back. He hacked it open with two blows. Whack, whack. I then pulled my spoon out of my pocket and scooped out the tender white insides.
Happily, I tossed the remains in the compost waste bin and strode across campus to return the machete to its proper place. Along the way, I noticed some of my students who were sweeping the path, and some of the timoun who were goofing around by the basin.
Of course, I took advantage of this opportunity to chase kids around with a machete.
They fled with glee and asked me if I was a ninja.
Life is good when little kids ask you, beaming, if you’re a ninja.
The high and the low (uniforms, universities, heat and humidity and so on)
This past week was the first week since January 12th where students were required to wear their uniforms (green pants or green plaid skirts and beige short-sleeved button-down shirts). Not all of them did, though. Things got lost in the earthquake.
Along with the uniforms, we also resumed the pre-earthquake class schedule. It was good to have a return to normalcy, but also there were lots of speed bumps. Sheer confusion over who needed to be where when. Oppressive heat in tents that have been pitched on the soccer field serving as classrooms for the time being. Trying to pick up on curriculum that had been abandoned in the wake of the quake.
A good quote from another volunteer: “In Haiti, plans are always –ish.”
We made do, taking the days one hour at a time. The low points: students who lost their notebook, were too hot to think, or didn’t feel like getting back to real work after having gotten used to a summer camp-type atmosphere and so just caused trouble or did nothing; staff who do not do their jobs; fatigue. These came as a harsh reminder of the trials of teaching.
The high points, though, are just so damn good. Students hungry to learn: raising their hands as high as they can, bursting with questions/ answers. The still of campus in the evening as hundreds of kids crack open their books and study. Learning by trial and error how to manage a class, and seeing improvement in the class clown’s comportment (using his powers for good instead of evil—after all, I was that kid). Encouraging the quiet girl to speak up, and hearing her form her words with cautious pride. Seeing light bulbs light up in their heads.
It was a long week. Frustrating at times, but heartening indeed as we forge forward.
...
The universities are starting to reopen. Yes! That means that the country is starting to get going, and it gives hope to our graduating Philo students who will look to continue their education next year.
It also means that our Junior Staff—LCS graduates who work at the school and attend college classes—will be heading back to school. We are stretched thin since the earthquake, as needs expand. It will be tricky to keep momentum as my coworkers resume their studies. But we’ll do it.
A shout out to foutbòl my arch nemeses
I can recall a time before there was television in every room of every house in America through of stories my dad has told me.
Before we were numbed by TV, we were illuminated by radio. Walking across the campus of a small, catholic liberal arts school in northern Indiana, Dad could follow the play-by-play of the football games as the scratchy voices of radio sports announcers poured out the windows of the dormitories. Everyone was tuned in, electricity in the airwaves, pulling for an Irish win.
Yesterday was Saturday. Around 4 pm Haitian time, the international sports world was glued to the broadcast of Real Madrid v Barcelona. The clash of two heavyweights in the Liga, the Spanish club championship.
At the front gate of Louverture Cleary School, there is a guard hut, little bigger than a telephone booth. In that hut is a television about the size of a 1940s-era radio, I’d guess. There were fifteen men and boys peering through the hut’s open door, gathered around the tiny screen, craning for a view of the next goal.
I was up in my room watching the match with Zamy (in our humble luxury suite) when Corey, another volunteer, called up to me. Augh, it was time to leave for church.
“When I was a kid, I used to pretend to be sick so that I didn’t have to go to church. I should do that now.”
“Okay, you can,” said Zamy. “When I was a child, if I was sick, I always have to go to church. You go to church to pray you will get better.”
Good point.
In any event, I dragged myself away form the screen and we piled in the van. Corey and I tried to listen to the game on the radio as we drove along the bumpy roads, but it was just too tough to follow the fast-paced Creole commentary.
Then I noticed that the pedestrians were behaving peculiarly. The streets were more or less clear. Almost everyone had gathered into groups of various sizes, facing away from the road. The same thing was happening in Port-au-Prince that happens at Notre Dame, and all over. It seemed like everyone had found a television or a radio to gather round.
The magnetism of sport is a global phenomenon. [Especially the beautiful game.]
Go, man, go! Go mango!
…
My arch nemeses are mosquitoes. We’re getting into the rainy season now, and they’re biting with a vengeance. You have to squash them before they siphon you off. My ankles are already riddled with their trademark bumps.
Those little vampires.
Reminds me of the first song I ever wrote with Justin Edge, sitting atop some playground equipment at Riverview Park, adolescent outlaws sipping on wine as I remember it: “Dear mosquito, we hate you. Oh mosquito, won’t you go? Dear mosquito, you’re a little ***hole.”
The forces of darkness are relentless, and we must stay-ever vigilant, warding them off with songs and strategic hand-claps. Personally, I prefer the itch of a bite wound to the sting of Deet. Wish away the mosquitoes, and you wish away the rain, and maybe even the whole food chain.
Well, we take the bad with the good, right?
So the country can be beautified
Dear Everybody,
Imagine me out of breath, bent at the waist with my hands on my knees, just arrived at your door, and grinning pink-faced as I pant, “Sorry I’m late.”
Because it’s been a while since I’ve written. Things have been, in a word, good. In a few more words:
The short term gets long
Palm tree forests/ imaginary lines slash history like a knife
Gold up in the trees
Chasing kids with a machete
The high and the low (uniforms, universities heat and humidity and so on)
A shout out to foutbòl and my arch nemeses
There have been peaks and valleys along the way as I navigate the Third World landscape. And of course part of what I love about all of it is that you can never know just what awaits you beyond the next rise in the horizon.
So, know that your buddy down in Haiti is alive and thriving, and hoping this finds you feeling well. Please pray for those who are exposed to the rain and
Go watch a sunrise.
Love,
John.
…
The short term gets long
You can make a compelling argument that the long-term answer to impoverished nations’ daunting development questions has to be education. Lots of people do. Right now in Haiti, however, putting a roof over people’s heads and food in their bellies is a priority. You can’t educate a corpse.
The Haitian Project formed a construction team not long after the earthquake, offering the double-whammy of employment to young men* from the neighborhood around LCS and immediate aid to those in need. My first week here in February, I led a team of students smashing up a fallen wall and transporting the rubble to lay as part of the foundation for a new home.
Upon that foundation, a tent was pitched. A family whose mud hut had collapsed during the quake lived there while the construction crew worked on building a sturdy, well-ventilated, beautiful (a veritable chateau compared to the sad sheet metal shacks you see everywhere) house for them.
Several weeks of hard work later, the house is ready to be lived in. While it is not yet equipped with the luxuries of electricity or running water, these things are envisioned for the future. It has an admirable front curb where people can sit and talk in the douceur of Caribbean evenings.
One of our American volunteers served as foreman and accountant for this and other work projects. With her increased rebuilding responsibilities she has needed to reallocate her time from the classroom to the worksites. So, I have taken over teaching religion to her Troisième (sophomore-aged) students.
That’s another reason why I came back here. To fill holes.
Some of my best lessons so far include: explaining how the three-leafed clover can be used to teach about the Trinity, and the glorious truth that “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patty’s Day”; asking students what they would do if they knew it was their last day on earth, and reminding them that Jesus spent it eating, sharing (himself) with his friends; making them memorize the prayer of Saint Francis, because it’s a good kind of thing to have in your head, I think.
Not insignificantly, I love classroom teaching. (Grading, not so much.) Setting foot back in the classroom has reminded me that I love it. That it’s what I do. So probably my vocation will have something to do with learning. We’ll see.
* These guys are my about age: able, hungry to work and help, but otherwise bereft of a job. Remember, Haiti has an unemployment rate around 80%. Lots of people with nothing to do but sit and wait for something, anything. THP gives them tools, and they are rebuilding their country. It almost seems simple sometimes, doesn’t it?
Palm tree forests/ imaginary lines slash history like a knife
We THP volunteers spent our nine-day Easter break in the Dominican Republic. It was a total phenomenonathon (= phenomenon + marathon). The bonfire on the beach; the motorcycle taxis in the milky neon blur of the tropical night (“Señor, mas rapido, por favor!”); the cliff-jumping into the waterfall after a galloping horse ride there (I felt like a cowboy, like Lawrence of Arabia); the fearsome force of the waves during a mid-night sea swim; the sun-accented tambourine Alleluias at the early-morning Easter Mass in the neighborhood church built in the time of Columbus; fudging enough Spanish to obtain cold beer and cheeseburgers from hole-in-the-wall cafés (going without transforms things, reveals the magic in them); stumbling upon the block-party meringue dancing next to the ruins of a 16th-century monastery and dancing with the pretty girl, getting to practice my French à la française; the long walks down foreign cobblestone streets and the hammock naps and the pigeons in the Cathedral plaza.
But those are stories best told over a café con leche, or a Cuba Libre.
What I want to tell you about is the way history shapes the earth. When you take a bus from Port-au-Prince to Santo Domingo, you ride out of a city with broken buildings and through an arid countryside freckled with mismatched shacks and skinny dogs passing by the window. The bus lurches and stutters along the pothole paradise of dirt “road.” There is a big lake to the left with trash in it and no commercial fishing, no water sports. There are deforested mountains to your right. There is a lot of dust everywhere.
You come to the border post, dismount the bus to stand in line in the sweaty customs hut, buy an overpriced Coke from the lady hawking them from the Igloo cooler on her head, and then get back on the bus for the four-hour home stretch.
There is an invisible line, but it has its signs. You start to see rows of houses made of wood. You can no longer see the ribs on the livestock and street dogs. All the billboards and placards are en español. The bus rolls smoothly along paved highways past towns laid out in grids and vast farms of sugarcane and plants that I don’t recognize. And, holy shit. There are forests of palm trees. So much green that it makes me want to cry.
As you approach Santo Domingo, it gets better/worse. There are overpasses, tunnels, sidewalks, gutters, functioning power lines, garbage trucks, suspension bridges. INFRASTRUCTURE.
About traveling to the DR after working for many months in Haiti: “It’s going to be totally awesome, except for the misgivings in the depths of our souls.”
Nothing can really prepare you for the shock of the stark contrast between the two nations. That two sides of the same island could be so different is mindboggling. That one side would thrive while the other struggles, suffers, and survives (just barely) is heartbreaking.
I’m no expert. I know that part of Haiti’s problem is that they won their independence too soon. They were never accepted by the international community—the USA couldn’t recognize Haiti as a legitimate republic because it was a black republic, and enslaving Africans was still an institution in the States. A country of revolutionaries couldn’t, or wouldn’t, accept a country of revolutionaries.
And there’s the problem of how they won their independence—the slaves eviscerated the land of every trace of their oppressors, which means that with the white man so went what he’d built. Plantations were razed to the ground. The fertile fields and evil system of labor that had made Haiti the richest colony in the hemisphere were destroyed, burned up, gone.
Things went from bad to worse. Power traded hands violently in a succession of corrupt leaders. Abuse and usurpation were standard for a long time.
…Sorry. It would be easy for me to get in over my head. Everyone should read up on the history of Haiti, as it tied to our own; its darkness is also our darkness.
A concise case-in-point: both the Dominican Republic had dictators. But in the DR, if you cut down a tree, they would cut off your head. In Haiti, the kleptocratic leaders and their thugs were more interested in stealing from the poor to fill their pockets than saving trees. Now they’re almost all gone. The trees.
Same ecology, different history.
What I’m trying to say is that the Dominican Republic is a poor country, but it is on its feet. It is a beautiful place to visit, fun to travel. It is a place that anyone with a little extra money saved up and looking to escape the crazy rigors of the rat race might want to go, and take the family. It’s just so sad that Haiti isn’t. So close and yet so, so far.
…
Guess what? While I was on the Spanish-speaking part of the island, I missed Haiti. Traveling and tasting is all good, and I can’t imagine a group of people more in need of a break than my fellow volunteers. But I could never sustain that way of life. My work is here at the school, to throw my weight into rebuilding. Simply, after a week of blowing off steam and recharging my soul-batteries, I found myself missing my students.
Also, my time in the DR gave me a renewed appreciation for our fresh drinking water at LCS. We have a well, and we have a chlorine-purification system. I pull the lever, and water flows. In the Dominican Republic, the scary-vast majority of potable water is obtained from plastic bottles. National Geographic recently did a special issue on H20. We could be fighting wars over it before too long.
In the end, I was glad to have a vacation. It reminded me of what I have here in Haiti.
Gold up in the trees
It can be any time of day, but let’s say it’s after the heat has worn off, when afternoon is tipping headlong into evening. The sun’s a sinking weight. An ember sighing itself to death.
I am still sweaty from teaching in the hot classroom tents, still dirty with soot and such from burning trash out along the road during afternoon cleanup. But I’m cooling off now as guitar chords catch on the breeze. Up in the rooftop garden, a handful of diligent students are strumming away on the six-strings. Seeing them make progress is a joy. And we still get some newcomers each week who struggle to make the guitar talk right.
“Fòk ou peze di. Si w pa peze, ou fè gita pete.”
“You have to press hard,” I tell them. “If you don’t press, you make the guitar fart.”
The garden where we play sits atop the roof of the chapel, at eye-level with the canopies of the mango trees. In the uppermost branches, there is gold.
From the ground, you can harvest the gold by launching a soccer or basketball up there. But sometimes they get stuck.
After enough failed attempts, a member of the security staff might take pity on you and climb the tree, amazingly dexterously gracefully, and grab one for you.
It is a bit easier from the rooftop garden. The treetops are right there. You can take a rake and, reaching out almost too far, harvest the gold by swatting among the leaves.
The gold is usually green. If it’s dark green, it’s not good yet. But when it starts to turn lighter and with a hint of orange, it’s ready.
Adam, a Philo student, wanders up the steps into guitar club wielding a long pole. His eyes meet mine and he gives a mischievous half-smile. I nod.
The unspoken agreement is this: I let him hunt for mangoes even though he probably shouldn’t be doing that, as long as he gives me one.
After a few minutes, success. He tosses me a mango, and I set it by my guitar case for later.
Later. The dinner bell rings, and guitar club is done for the day. The sun is almost down. It’s last burnt oranges and raspberry rays are dripping from the leaves of the trees. I bite into my mango and peel away the skin, sink my teeth into its fruit.
Oh, how tropically sticky sweet,
Bleeding golden on my fingertips,
Blessing my chin and hands and cheeks,
Sunset fibers singing in my teeth.
Chasing kids with a machete
When I returned from Easter break, Zamy (roommate) had several coconuts stashed under the desk we share. “Have one any time, just ask Mathieu.”
It took me all week to seize the day. Friday morning I had a break between classes. I went to the tool depot and grabbed a machete. Mathieu, one of the old apple-cheeked smiling security guards pierced the coconut with four deft blows, carved a hole in the top through which to drink, and handed it to me.
Yum.
The last drop drunk, I handed it back. He hacked it open with two blows. Whack, whack. I then pulled my spoon out of my pocket and scooped out the tender white insides.
Happily, I tossed the remains in the compost waste bin and strode across campus to return the machete to its proper place. Along the way, I noticed some of my students who were sweeping the path, and some of the timoun who were goofing around by the basin.
Of course, I took advantage of this opportunity to chase kids around with a machete.
They fled with glee and asked me if I was a ninja.
Life is good when little kids ask you, beaming, if you’re a ninja.
The high and the low (uniforms, universities, heat and humidity and so on)
This past week was the first week since January 12th where students were required to wear their uniforms (green pants or green plaid skirts and beige short-sleeved button-down shirts). Not all of them did, though. Things got lost in the earthquake.
Along with the uniforms, we also resumed the pre-earthquake class schedule. It was good to have a return to normalcy, but also there were lots of speed bumps. Sheer confusion over who needed to be where when. Oppressive heat in tents that have been pitched on the soccer field serving as classrooms for the time being. Trying to pick up on curriculum that had been abandoned in the wake of the quake.
A good quote from another volunteer: “In Haiti, plans are always –ish.”
We made do, taking the days one hour at a time. The low points: students who lost their notebook, were too hot to think, or didn’t feel like getting back to real work after having gotten used to a summer camp-type atmosphere and so just caused trouble or did nothing; staff who do not do their jobs; fatigue. These came as a harsh reminder of the trials of teaching.
The high points, though, are just so damn good. Students hungry to learn: raising their hands as high as they can, bursting with questions/ answers. The still of campus in the evening as hundreds of kids crack open their books and study. Learning by trial and error how to manage a class, and seeing improvement in the class clown’s comportment (using his powers for good instead of evil—after all, I was that kid). Encouraging the quiet girl to speak up, and hearing her form her words with cautious pride. Seeing light bulbs light up in their heads.
It was a long week. Frustrating at times, but heartening indeed as we forge forward.
...
The universities are starting to reopen. Yes! That means that the country is starting to get going, and it gives hope to our graduating Philo students who will look to continue their education next year.
It also means that our Junior Staff—LCS graduates who work at the school and attend college classes—will be heading back to school. We are stretched thin since the earthquake, as needs expand. It will be tricky to keep momentum as my coworkers resume their studies. But we’ll do it.
A shout out to foutbòl my arch nemeses
I can recall a time before there was television in every room of every house in America through of stories my dad has told me.
Before we were numbed by TV, we were illuminated by radio. Walking across the campus of a small, catholic liberal arts school in northern Indiana, Dad could follow the play-by-play of the football games as the scratchy voices of radio sports announcers poured out the windows of the dormitories. Everyone was tuned in, electricity in the airwaves, pulling for an Irish win.
Yesterday was Saturday. Around 4 pm Haitian time, the international sports world was glued to the broadcast of Real Madrid v Barcelona. The clash of two heavyweights in the Liga, the Spanish club championship.
At the front gate of Louverture Cleary School, there is a guard hut, little bigger than a telephone booth. In that hut is a television about the size of a 1940s-era radio, I’d guess. There were fifteen men and boys peering through the hut’s open door, gathered around the tiny screen, craning for a view of the next goal.
I was up in my room watching the match with Zamy (in our humble luxury suite) when Corey, another volunteer, called up to me. Augh, it was time to leave for church.
“When I was a kid, I used to pretend to be sick so that I didn’t have to go to church. I should do that now.”
“Okay, you can,” said Zamy. “When I was a child, if I was sick, I always have to go to church. You go to church to pray you will get better.”
Good point.
In any event, I dragged myself away form the screen and we piled in the van. Corey and I tried to listen to the game on the radio as we drove along the bumpy roads, but it was just too tough to follow the fast-paced Creole commentary.
Then I noticed that the pedestrians were behaving peculiarly. The streets were more or less clear. Almost everyone had gathered into groups of various sizes, facing away from the road. The same thing was happening in Port-au-Prince that happens at Notre Dame, and all over. It seemed like everyone had found a television or a radio to gather round.
The magnetism of sport is a global phenomenon. [Especially the beautiful game.]
Go, man, go! Go mango!
…
My arch nemeses are mosquitoes. We’re getting into the rainy season now, and they’re biting with a vengeance. You have to squash them before they siphon you off. My ankles are already riddled with their trademark bumps.
Those little vampires.
Reminds me of the first song I ever wrote with Justin Edge, sitting atop some playground equipment at Riverview Park, adolescent outlaws sipping on wine as I remember it: “Dear mosquito, we hate you. Oh mosquito, won’t you go? Dear mosquito, you’re a little ***hole.”
The forces of darkness are relentless, and we must stay-ever vigilant, warding them off with songs and strategic hand-claps. Personally, I prefer the itch of a bite wound to the sting of Deet. Wish away the mosquitoes, and you wish away the rain, and maybe even the whole food chain.
Well, we take the bad with the good, right?
Haiti #2
Leli fe bel
"When it (the weather)’s beautiful…"
Dear All,
I write you from the tropics, in the midst of 40 Lenten days in the desert. Know that I am well. I’m remembering to take my malaria medication, to drink plenty of water, and to keep my eye out for falling coconuts.
It’s funny: we had a visiting group from the USA last week, doctors and college students. Talking with them, they were amazed that someone would choose to live in Haiti in such austere conditions for long periods of time—the absence of running water, cheeseburgers, and HD television; the overabundance of mosquitoes, heat, and hard times. One of the doctors told me, “I’m glad I came here, you know. It’s a life experience. But I know I’m never coming back.”
Maybe I’ll never be able to fully explain why I love this place, why I relish walking with those who live here, who have no choice. Or why, despite the heat, it feels like anything but a desert to me.
With prayers for health and Joy wherever you are,
and with Love,
John.
…
Negotiations Atop a Ten-Foot Wall The visiting group had brought a brand-new volleyball down to the school. Wednesday was the first day I’d used it in my sport class, forming a circle with the handful of students interested in learning how to set, bump, and spike, while the rest of the class played soccer with a partially deflated basketball.
At one point, I left the aspiring volleyball-ers to settle an erupting dispute in the nearby soccer match. By the time I’d quelled the fight with threats of just taking the ball away and made it back to see how the volleyball playing was going, the new ball had, of course, been kicked over the cinderblock courtyard wall.
Class was almost finished, so I sent the students to drink some water before their next class, and proceeded to mount a waist-high pile of cinderblocks and then climb to peer over the wall. From the top, I could see into our neighbor’s plot of farmland, the white ball resting among the hand-ploughed earth only yards away. A man stood off at a distance, wearing a straw hat and with spade in hand, his back bent into his work. I called out to him in Creole:
“Excuse me, sir, I don’t want to bother you…” He looked up at me, still for a moment, then turned back to his tilling.
I pressed on, “Excuse me, sir. I don’t want to bother you, but I need you to help me. That is my ball in your yard. Can you throw it to me. Not now, but when you get the chance.”
Again, he just stared.
“You see, the students in the school kicked it over. They did not do it on purpose. Kids do that, you know. I can climb down, but I don’t want to mess up your field. Please throw it back.”
Finally, he spoke. “I will if you give me money.”
“What?! You want me to give you money for my ball? That’s stealing.” I was about to win a friend, or burn a bridge.
“You think I’m a thief.”
“No, I don’t think you’re a thief. You’re my neighbor. And neighbors have to help neighbors. Today, I need you to help me. Maybe tomorrow you will need me to help you.”
At this point, he smiled. He set to walking toward me, probably perplexed at this persistent white boy straddling the top of a ten-foot wall. He picked up the ball and said, “Where do you live?”
“I live here at the school. I’m a teacher. A volunteer.”
“What do you teach?”
“English, with some other things.”
“I’ll give you the ball if you teach me English.”
“Okay, that’s good. What do you want to know how to say?”
“Everything.”
“Everything? I can’t teach you everything.” He looked down at the ball, tossed back and forth between his hands, then looked up at me with a grin.
“Okay, do you know how to say ‘good morning’?”
“Bonjou.”
“And you can say, ‘good afternoon’?”
“I don’t know.”
I taught him the appropriate greeting for all times of day. He smiled and threw the ball up to me. I caught it and said “Thank you” in English. He cocked his head to one side. “Thank you. Sa vle di, mési.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”
…
When the Walls Fall Down The students here at LCS live tough lives. They come from very poor families, and life is even harder now since the earthquake. When life gets shitty, it’s good to have someone to talk to. It is possible that the very best thing I do as a volunteer is listen.
I have a good rapport with the kids; partially because I speak French and Creole, partially because I was here last year, and partially because my favorite thing to do when I’m not doing anything else is to simply find someone and talk. I can think of three moments last week when the Joy and Weight of having these two ears hit me square in the face.
Mandy is a Philo student, which means that this is her last year at LCS. She wants to study political science, but her parents want her to study Law. She is one of my brightest students, fluent in four languages, and I know she can excel in any field. But the universal problem of teenagers disagreeing with parents could be rendered moot—the earthquake wiped out many of the universities in Port-au-Prince. Not all of the buildings fell down, but many were damaged, and all are closed. Many students were killed when their classrooms and libraries came falling down.
Now, no one knows when the universities will re-open. Mandy’s future is obscure. We talked for a long time in the calm evening hours of Study Hall, wondering about the When’s and How’s of life. I looked her in the eyes and told her not to worry, that the universities will reopen, that her parents only want her to be happy, and that her inner light will lead her to a beautiful future.
But if the answers to her questions are blowing in the wind, they are inaudible for now.
Patrick is also a Philo student. He is struggling with his fellow classmates, and fears becoming alienated. “So-and-so said I said this, but I didn’t. So-and-so said I said that, which I did, but they misunderstood.”
We were out on the far playground, swinging on the rusty swing set and watching the sunlight sink down the day’s drain. It was kind of refreshing: I couldn’t solve his problems, but drama amongst adolescents is normal. Teenagers have social crises, earthquake or no. For once around here, Mother Nature was not to blame.
There was no one else he felt like he could talk to, though. I and I was there.
There’s something to be said for just being there.
Jesly is a middle-school age student. I saw her sitting alone on Friday afternoon, looking off at something/nothing in the distance. It took a while, but she eventually opened up to me. She was having a problem with some of the girls in her dorm room—normal. But life’s normal challenges get harder when the ground has shaken out from under you.
“They say I always cause trouble. Do you like students who cause trouble?”
“Well, I like you.”
“So, you think I cause trouble?”
“All students cause trouble sometimes. Even I cause trouble. We have to try to be better.”
Then I saw that she was crying. She was not sobbing, just tears falling silently down her beautiful dark-chocolate-colored face as she said, in Creole: “When I’m sad, it makes me miss my brother. He died in the earthquake. Now, I need you to pray for me.”
And so I do.
…
The Tropics? Last week, we had a wave of cooler, dreary days. Temperatures plummeted into the mid- to lower-seventies—Ha! I even slept with a sheet one night. Students asked me if it ever gets cold like that where I’m from. I explained to them the difference between “cold” and “cool.” They were incredulous about snowstorms, but seemed more believing when I explained about radiators and central heating, etc.
Finally, the sun came back out. I guess we need cloudy days to make us appreciate azure skies. Now, it’s back to Hot. Sweating is the norm. When you fight it, it’s rough. But once you give in, it’s not so bad. I always shower before bed, then crawl into my mosquito net with my fan trained directly on me—that’s the one time of day I’m not sticky with sweat.
Today, to fight the heat, I cut my own hair. Buzzed it with an electric trimmer. By this point, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I even taper the sides. Some of the neighborhood kids told me not to do it, because they liked playing with my weird white boy hairdo and want me to grow it long. But it’s just too hot for that.
…
Chalk Dust Teaching is going well. Most of my classes have between 20 and 30 students. I try to find interesting things to lecture about. I’m having kids write their own parables for my religion classes, and next week we’ll talk about Saint Patrick’s Day—from explaining the Trinity in Ireland using the Clover, to green clothes and green beer, to bagpipes and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Also, last week I started teaching English to 7th-grade students (took over for a volunteer who needs more time to devote to her duties that involve expanding our Timoun program). It’s a blast—we work on verbs, do lots of vocabulary, and I’ve taught them a couple songs as mnemonic devices. Being able to yell at them in Creole is a real boon to classroom management.
Each day by the end of classes I am pretty much covered in chalk dust. It’s a good feeling, actually. I still get a rush out of having so many pairs of eyes looking to me, and seeing light bulbs go off in their heads.
There are frustrations, some that are unique to Haiti: teaching in tents donated by the Italian military until we can get a couple of our classroom buildings fixed. The tents are pitched on the soccer field, it they get really hot. I push the students (despite the overwhelming desire to melt in sweat and sleep), telling them that if they give me ten more good minutes of focusing, I’ll let them go early. It kind of works.
And trying to listen to “Faith Like a Child” with my Junior class in the Math I classroom is difficult, because the room is situated near the edge of campus that boarders our street, Santo 5, and the men across the street use an obnoxiously loud diesel-fueled contraption to fabricate cinderblocks all day long.
And some days there is no chalk to be found. And students are always missing, on dishwashing duty or helping with the Timoun (day care) program or for any number of reasons.
But we make do. Teaching in Haiti has honed my going-with-the-flow skills.
…
Digging a Hole/ The Glory of Coke. Last week, my Netwayaj (the time of day after classes when students clean the school and do neighborhood beautification) project was leading teams of male students to dig a new metal pit. The site was located about two hundred yards from the school, down a dirty road that tapers down to an alley, and opens up again to a two-lane thoroughfare lined with palm and banana trees, bordered by cinderblock walls in various stages of collapse, and next to a trash-strewn field.
The work started off slow, me and twelve or so young men picking away at the sun-baked earth with pickaxes and shovels. We made the perimeter about five feet wide by eight feet long, and took turns wielded the tools.
Working for about an hour and twenty minutes each day, the hole grew steadily deeper. Thursday, our last day of Netwayaj for the week (since our school only has a half-day on Fridays to give students ample time to travel home before dark), my team and I worked like a well-oiled machine. I brought my wristwatch, and we each worked a two-minute shift full-out. The guys got into it, pushing each other to work harder.
I also took advantage of this time to talk to the guys about “Manning Up,” being the kind of men their country needs to rebuild. Jeffrey, a smart kid who often has a chip on his shoulder said to me, “But mister, we are still only kids.”
I told Jeff I thought that was bullshit, and then explained what that means. So, we also learned some new vocabulary.
By the end of the day, the dirt on our skin was turning to mud from sweat. But we’d dug a hole, and we’d dug it good and deep. By the time we left the dig site, muscles exhausted and shovels slung over our shoulders, the sun was softening and we had the satisfaction of a job well-done.
I treated myself to a pure-cane-sugar Coca Cola. It hit the spot.
…
Better than Bombs Night time is one of the few times during a day when I can sit in silence, uninterrupted, and read or pray or listen to music when my Walkman isn’t on the fritz.
Last week I read a book called Left to Tell, a beautiful and redemptive memoire by a woman who survived the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Another of the volunteers showed the film Hotel Rwanda to his Philo English class, so I was able to discuss the politics, sociology, and heartbreak of the genocide with some of my favorite students.
“Mr. D., in the movie, the United Nations was not able to help the Rwandese people. The general said they are ‘peacekeepers, not peacemakers.’ So they could not even fire their guns to protect people from killers. It makes me wonder how I should feel about the UN in Haiti. Should I trust them? Why are they here?”
Whoa. I realized I was over my head, so I searched out their English teacher, also named John, who was a political science major at the University of Notre Dame. I listened to his conversation with the student, talk of bureaucracy and red tape vs. moral imperatives, and more questions than answers.
Later that night, I lay in bed and hummed along with my oscillating fan. I wondered how humans can be so inhuman. I wondered what it will take to prevent something like that from happening again, and knew that the answer has much to do with Education and Forgiveness. Suddenly…
BOOM! Boom, boom, boomoomoom…The sound of a ripe mango falling from its branch, crashing onto the corrugated metal roofing above my head, and rolling along to fall and splatter on the sidewalk below.
I prayed a silent prayer of thanks for my many blessings, and even that the hardships that most immediately face Haiti come from natural disasters, a plagued history, and broken systems, rather than men carrying machetes.
I prayed that ignorance might be wiped out with a loving vengeance.
Books are much better than bombs.
…
The Art of the Sledgehammer Two weekends ago, I had one of the toughest days of manual labor in my life. Several volunteers and a group of Haitian staff affiliated with LCS set out around 6:30 AM to help clean up a fallen wall at our brother school across the city, St. Luis Gonzag.
The wall had been around ten feet high. Now, the bottom two or three feet were intact, but the top of the wall had toppled into the school grounds—one hundred yards of cinderblock, cement, and rebar.
We worked all morning long, smashing up fractured cinderblocks with sledgehammers, shoveling debris, and heaving stones from inside the school onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the wall. Dump trucks were came to haul the wreckage away, and we loaded their beds by hand.
After several hours of hard work, my muscles were tiring big time. Lunch time came as a relief. I downed lots of water and inhaled a Meal Ready to Eat (we had boxed of these donated to the school by the US military. Imagine me sitting next to a work site in Haiti, soaked in sweat and weary, eating vanilla pound cake, cranberries, and self-heating beef stew [just add water]. I was delightfully flabbergasted. A heck of an invention).
Thankfully, our numbers grew throughout the day, as more men showed up to work. Eventually, a bulldozer from US Aid came and helped load the wall debris into the dump trucks. By the end of the day, 3pm, I was worn out—a wrung-out rag, a beat up bag of bones. But it was fulfilling work, rebuilding Haiti one cinderblock at a time. Over the next two days, a sheet metal fence was put up as a temporary barrier.
Yesterday, a team of LCS volunteers and staff went to perform a similar demolition mission at the Sisters of Charity (Mother Theresa’s folks). Five of us worked with sledgehammers and pick axes and shovels to break apart a downed wall that was blocking the road in front of the orphanage.
People from the neighborhood gathered to watch, and young men offered me their advice for free. Some even pitched in, thankfully. After less than an hour of laboring in the hard Caribbean sun, I was feeling fried and tired.
But we kept on. Taking turns, I found that smashing the shit out of a busted wall was a phenomenal channel for venting my frustrations with our beautiful but broken and heartrending world. I heaved the hammer up high above my head. Thud. This is for genocide. Thud. This is for earthquakes. Thud. This is for clouds looming over kids’ futures. Thud. This is for my own hard heart and shortsightedness and doubt. Thud. This is for the lonely. Thud. This is for empty stomachs and hearts. Thud. Thud. Thud.
I swung until I had nothing left in me, and the fruits of my labors lay broken on the ground. And I looked at the faces of the men working with me. Sweat stung my eyes. There were no black faces or white faces at this point. I couldn’t help but smile. Covered head to toe in cement dust, we were all gray.
We managed to move the wall about three feet, which was enough room for traffic to pass.
Then a bulldozer and some dump trucks showed up, ordered by our President, Patrick Moynihan. They did a good job cleaning up. It was impressive to see the heavy machinery at work.
I slept like a bear last night. And today my back is sore. The twinges of pain are good, though, because I earned them.
Suspended Chords On weekend mornings, campus is quiet. I like to play my guitar in the chapel. It’s an open-air building, with large white pillars on the perimeter, and the limbs of tropical trees reaching in through the iron gates between the pillars. Their shadows dance across the floor like birds in a fight.
Playing the gee-tar is a good way for me to pray without words. I’ve written a couple songs in the month that I’ve been back on the island, and I like to send them spiraling on the sea breeze up above the trees.
They don’t have words yet, but the words will come.
Some days, local street urchins, students, or a fellow LCS staff member will hear me playing and wander up to the chapel to listen. Last week, a group of five kids sat on the wooden benches we used for pews and I played them a song I’d written last year: “our designs get broken; plans are given to change…” They clapped along with the rhythm, adding a wonderful pulse to the tune. I sang loud and they clapped loud.
It was a good moment.
…
Okay, that’s enough for today.
"When it (the weather)’s beautiful…"
Dear All,
I write you from the tropics, in the midst of 40 Lenten days in the desert. Know that I am well. I’m remembering to take my malaria medication, to drink plenty of water, and to keep my eye out for falling coconuts.
It’s funny: we had a visiting group from the USA last week, doctors and college students. Talking with them, they were amazed that someone would choose to live in Haiti in such austere conditions for long periods of time—the absence of running water, cheeseburgers, and HD television; the overabundance of mosquitoes, heat, and hard times. One of the doctors told me, “I’m glad I came here, you know. It’s a life experience. But I know I’m never coming back.”
Maybe I’ll never be able to fully explain why I love this place, why I relish walking with those who live here, who have no choice. Or why, despite the heat, it feels like anything but a desert to me.
With prayers for health and Joy wherever you are,
and with Love,
John.
…
Negotiations Atop a Ten-Foot Wall The visiting group had brought a brand-new volleyball down to the school. Wednesday was the first day I’d used it in my sport class, forming a circle with the handful of students interested in learning how to set, bump, and spike, while the rest of the class played soccer with a partially deflated basketball.
At one point, I left the aspiring volleyball-ers to settle an erupting dispute in the nearby soccer match. By the time I’d quelled the fight with threats of just taking the ball away and made it back to see how the volleyball playing was going, the new ball had, of course, been kicked over the cinderblock courtyard wall.
Class was almost finished, so I sent the students to drink some water before their next class, and proceeded to mount a waist-high pile of cinderblocks and then climb to peer over the wall. From the top, I could see into our neighbor’s plot of farmland, the white ball resting among the hand-ploughed earth only yards away. A man stood off at a distance, wearing a straw hat and with spade in hand, his back bent into his work. I called out to him in Creole:
“Excuse me, sir, I don’t want to bother you…” He looked up at me, still for a moment, then turned back to his tilling.
I pressed on, “Excuse me, sir. I don’t want to bother you, but I need you to help me. That is my ball in your yard. Can you throw it to me. Not now, but when you get the chance.”
Again, he just stared.
“You see, the students in the school kicked it over. They did not do it on purpose. Kids do that, you know. I can climb down, but I don’t want to mess up your field. Please throw it back.”
Finally, he spoke. “I will if you give me money.”
“What?! You want me to give you money for my ball? That’s stealing.” I was about to win a friend, or burn a bridge.
“You think I’m a thief.”
“No, I don’t think you’re a thief. You’re my neighbor. And neighbors have to help neighbors. Today, I need you to help me. Maybe tomorrow you will need me to help you.”
At this point, he smiled. He set to walking toward me, probably perplexed at this persistent white boy straddling the top of a ten-foot wall. He picked up the ball and said, “Where do you live?”
“I live here at the school. I’m a teacher. A volunteer.”
“What do you teach?”
“English, with some other things.”
“I’ll give you the ball if you teach me English.”
“Okay, that’s good. What do you want to know how to say?”
“Everything.”
“Everything? I can’t teach you everything.” He looked down at the ball, tossed back and forth between his hands, then looked up at me with a grin.
“Okay, do you know how to say ‘good morning’?”
“Bonjou.”
“And you can say, ‘good afternoon’?”
“I don’t know.”
I taught him the appropriate greeting for all times of day. He smiled and threw the ball up to me. I caught it and said “Thank you” in English. He cocked his head to one side. “Thank you. Sa vle di, mési.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”
…
When the Walls Fall Down The students here at LCS live tough lives. They come from very poor families, and life is even harder now since the earthquake. When life gets shitty, it’s good to have someone to talk to. It is possible that the very best thing I do as a volunteer is listen.
I have a good rapport with the kids; partially because I speak French and Creole, partially because I was here last year, and partially because my favorite thing to do when I’m not doing anything else is to simply find someone and talk. I can think of three moments last week when the Joy and Weight of having these two ears hit me square in the face.
Mandy is a Philo student, which means that this is her last year at LCS. She wants to study political science, but her parents want her to study Law. She is one of my brightest students, fluent in four languages, and I know she can excel in any field. But the universal problem of teenagers disagreeing with parents could be rendered moot—the earthquake wiped out many of the universities in Port-au-Prince. Not all of the buildings fell down, but many were damaged, and all are closed. Many students were killed when their classrooms and libraries came falling down.
Now, no one knows when the universities will re-open. Mandy’s future is obscure. We talked for a long time in the calm evening hours of Study Hall, wondering about the When’s and How’s of life. I looked her in the eyes and told her not to worry, that the universities will reopen, that her parents only want her to be happy, and that her inner light will lead her to a beautiful future.
But if the answers to her questions are blowing in the wind, they are inaudible for now.
Patrick is also a Philo student. He is struggling with his fellow classmates, and fears becoming alienated. “So-and-so said I said this, but I didn’t. So-and-so said I said that, which I did, but they misunderstood.”
We were out on the far playground, swinging on the rusty swing set and watching the sunlight sink down the day’s drain. It was kind of refreshing: I couldn’t solve his problems, but drama amongst adolescents is normal. Teenagers have social crises, earthquake or no. For once around here, Mother Nature was not to blame.
There was no one else he felt like he could talk to, though. I and I was there.
There’s something to be said for just being there.
Jesly is a middle-school age student. I saw her sitting alone on Friday afternoon, looking off at something/nothing in the distance. It took a while, but she eventually opened up to me. She was having a problem with some of the girls in her dorm room—normal. But life’s normal challenges get harder when the ground has shaken out from under you.
“They say I always cause trouble. Do you like students who cause trouble?”
“Well, I like you.”
“So, you think I cause trouble?”
“All students cause trouble sometimes. Even I cause trouble. We have to try to be better.”
Then I saw that she was crying. She was not sobbing, just tears falling silently down her beautiful dark-chocolate-colored face as she said, in Creole: “When I’m sad, it makes me miss my brother. He died in the earthquake. Now, I need you to pray for me.”
And so I do.
…
The Tropics? Last week, we had a wave of cooler, dreary days. Temperatures plummeted into the mid- to lower-seventies—Ha! I even slept with a sheet one night. Students asked me if it ever gets cold like that where I’m from. I explained to them the difference between “cold” and “cool.” They were incredulous about snowstorms, but seemed more believing when I explained about radiators and central heating, etc.
Finally, the sun came back out. I guess we need cloudy days to make us appreciate azure skies. Now, it’s back to Hot. Sweating is the norm. When you fight it, it’s rough. But once you give in, it’s not so bad. I always shower before bed, then crawl into my mosquito net with my fan trained directly on me—that’s the one time of day I’m not sticky with sweat.
Today, to fight the heat, I cut my own hair. Buzzed it with an electric trimmer. By this point, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I even taper the sides. Some of the neighborhood kids told me not to do it, because they liked playing with my weird white boy hairdo and want me to grow it long. But it’s just too hot for that.
…
Chalk Dust Teaching is going well. Most of my classes have between 20 and 30 students. I try to find interesting things to lecture about. I’m having kids write their own parables for my religion classes, and next week we’ll talk about Saint Patrick’s Day—from explaining the Trinity in Ireland using the Clover, to green clothes and green beer, to bagpipes and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Also, last week I started teaching English to 7th-grade students (took over for a volunteer who needs more time to devote to her duties that involve expanding our Timoun program). It’s a blast—we work on verbs, do lots of vocabulary, and I’ve taught them a couple songs as mnemonic devices. Being able to yell at them in Creole is a real boon to classroom management.
Each day by the end of classes I am pretty much covered in chalk dust. It’s a good feeling, actually. I still get a rush out of having so many pairs of eyes looking to me, and seeing light bulbs go off in their heads.
There are frustrations, some that are unique to Haiti: teaching in tents donated by the Italian military until we can get a couple of our classroom buildings fixed. The tents are pitched on the soccer field, it they get really hot. I push the students (despite the overwhelming desire to melt in sweat and sleep), telling them that if they give me ten more good minutes of focusing, I’ll let them go early. It kind of works.
And trying to listen to “Faith Like a Child” with my Junior class in the Math I classroom is difficult, because the room is situated near the edge of campus that boarders our street, Santo 5, and the men across the street use an obnoxiously loud diesel-fueled contraption to fabricate cinderblocks all day long.
And some days there is no chalk to be found. And students are always missing, on dishwashing duty or helping with the Timoun (day care) program or for any number of reasons.
But we make do. Teaching in Haiti has honed my going-with-the-flow skills.
…
Digging a Hole/ The Glory of Coke. Last week, my Netwayaj (the time of day after classes when students clean the school and do neighborhood beautification) project was leading teams of male students to dig a new metal pit. The site was located about two hundred yards from the school, down a dirty road that tapers down to an alley, and opens up again to a two-lane thoroughfare lined with palm and banana trees, bordered by cinderblock walls in various stages of collapse, and next to a trash-strewn field.
The work started off slow, me and twelve or so young men picking away at the sun-baked earth with pickaxes and shovels. We made the perimeter about five feet wide by eight feet long, and took turns wielded the tools.
Working for about an hour and twenty minutes each day, the hole grew steadily deeper. Thursday, our last day of Netwayaj for the week (since our school only has a half-day on Fridays to give students ample time to travel home before dark), my team and I worked like a well-oiled machine. I brought my wristwatch, and we each worked a two-minute shift full-out. The guys got into it, pushing each other to work harder.
I also took advantage of this time to talk to the guys about “Manning Up,” being the kind of men their country needs to rebuild. Jeffrey, a smart kid who often has a chip on his shoulder said to me, “But mister, we are still only kids.”
I told Jeff I thought that was bullshit, and then explained what that means. So, we also learned some new vocabulary.
By the end of the day, the dirt on our skin was turning to mud from sweat. But we’d dug a hole, and we’d dug it good and deep. By the time we left the dig site, muscles exhausted and shovels slung over our shoulders, the sun was softening and we had the satisfaction of a job well-done.
I treated myself to a pure-cane-sugar Coca Cola. It hit the spot.
…
Better than Bombs Night time is one of the few times during a day when I can sit in silence, uninterrupted, and read or pray or listen to music when my Walkman isn’t on the fritz.
Last week I read a book called Left to Tell, a beautiful and redemptive memoire by a woman who survived the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Another of the volunteers showed the film Hotel Rwanda to his Philo English class, so I was able to discuss the politics, sociology, and heartbreak of the genocide with some of my favorite students.
“Mr. D., in the movie, the United Nations was not able to help the Rwandese people. The general said they are ‘peacekeepers, not peacemakers.’ So they could not even fire their guns to protect people from killers. It makes me wonder how I should feel about the UN in Haiti. Should I trust them? Why are they here?”
Whoa. I realized I was over my head, so I searched out their English teacher, also named John, who was a political science major at the University of Notre Dame. I listened to his conversation with the student, talk of bureaucracy and red tape vs. moral imperatives, and more questions than answers.
Later that night, I lay in bed and hummed along with my oscillating fan. I wondered how humans can be so inhuman. I wondered what it will take to prevent something like that from happening again, and knew that the answer has much to do with Education and Forgiveness. Suddenly…
BOOM! Boom, boom, boomoomoom…The sound of a ripe mango falling from its branch, crashing onto the corrugated metal roofing above my head, and rolling along to fall and splatter on the sidewalk below.
I prayed a silent prayer of thanks for my many blessings, and even that the hardships that most immediately face Haiti come from natural disasters, a plagued history, and broken systems, rather than men carrying machetes.
I prayed that ignorance might be wiped out with a loving vengeance.
Books are much better than bombs.
…
The Art of the Sledgehammer Two weekends ago, I had one of the toughest days of manual labor in my life. Several volunteers and a group of Haitian staff affiliated with LCS set out around 6:30 AM to help clean up a fallen wall at our brother school across the city, St. Luis Gonzag.
The wall had been around ten feet high. Now, the bottom two or three feet were intact, but the top of the wall had toppled into the school grounds—one hundred yards of cinderblock, cement, and rebar.
We worked all morning long, smashing up fractured cinderblocks with sledgehammers, shoveling debris, and heaving stones from inside the school onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the wall. Dump trucks were came to haul the wreckage away, and we loaded their beds by hand.
After several hours of hard work, my muscles were tiring big time. Lunch time came as a relief. I downed lots of water and inhaled a Meal Ready to Eat (we had boxed of these donated to the school by the US military. Imagine me sitting next to a work site in Haiti, soaked in sweat and weary, eating vanilla pound cake, cranberries, and self-heating beef stew [just add water]. I was delightfully flabbergasted. A heck of an invention).
Thankfully, our numbers grew throughout the day, as more men showed up to work. Eventually, a bulldozer from US Aid came and helped load the wall debris into the dump trucks. By the end of the day, 3pm, I was worn out—a wrung-out rag, a beat up bag of bones. But it was fulfilling work, rebuilding Haiti one cinderblock at a time. Over the next two days, a sheet metal fence was put up as a temporary barrier.
Yesterday, a team of LCS volunteers and staff went to perform a similar demolition mission at the Sisters of Charity (Mother Theresa’s folks). Five of us worked with sledgehammers and pick axes and shovels to break apart a downed wall that was blocking the road in front of the orphanage.
People from the neighborhood gathered to watch, and young men offered me their advice for free. Some even pitched in, thankfully. After less than an hour of laboring in the hard Caribbean sun, I was feeling fried and tired.
But we kept on. Taking turns, I found that smashing the shit out of a busted wall was a phenomenal channel for venting my frustrations with our beautiful but broken and heartrending world. I heaved the hammer up high above my head. Thud. This is for genocide. Thud. This is for earthquakes. Thud. This is for clouds looming over kids’ futures. Thud. This is for my own hard heart and shortsightedness and doubt. Thud. This is for the lonely. Thud. This is for empty stomachs and hearts. Thud. Thud. Thud.
I swung until I had nothing left in me, and the fruits of my labors lay broken on the ground. And I looked at the faces of the men working with me. Sweat stung my eyes. There were no black faces or white faces at this point. I couldn’t help but smile. Covered head to toe in cement dust, we were all gray.
We managed to move the wall about three feet, which was enough room for traffic to pass.
Then a bulldozer and some dump trucks showed up, ordered by our President, Patrick Moynihan. They did a good job cleaning up. It was impressive to see the heavy machinery at work.
I slept like a bear last night. And today my back is sore. The twinges of pain are good, though, because I earned them.
Suspended Chords On weekend mornings, campus is quiet. I like to play my guitar in the chapel. It’s an open-air building, with large white pillars on the perimeter, and the limbs of tropical trees reaching in through the iron gates between the pillars. Their shadows dance across the floor like birds in a fight.
Playing the gee-tar is a good way for me to pray without words. I’ve written a couple songs in the month that I’ve been back on the island, and I like to send them spiraling on the sea breeze up above the trees.
They don’t have words yet, but the words will come.
Some days, local street urchins, students, or a fellow LCS staff member will hear me playing and wander up to the chapel to listen. Last week, a group of five kids sat on the wooden benches we used for pews and I played them a song I’d written last year: “our designs get broken; plans are given to change…” They clapped along with the rhythm, adding a wonderful pulse to the tune. I sang loud and they clapped loud.
It was a good moment.
…
Okay, that’s enough for today.
Haiti
My friend John volunteered for a year in Haiti at a school. I met him this past August at Notre Dame after his year of service. After the earthquake he felt compelled to go back as many else would as well. This is one of his emails. He writes about his time at the school and the time post-earthquake. I thought some of you might find it interesting. He is also a great writer so it doesn't seem long. He has a few more emails that I might post as well.
anpil men, chay pa lou
--With many hands, the load is not heavy.
Dear All,
I am alive and well in Haiti, grâce à Dieu. It would be hard for me to put the last two weeks into words.
If limited to only a few, I’d say:
Rubble
The Oasis
Aftershocks
Roadside Bonfires
Palm Tree Silhouettes
Timoun
What Does Faith Look Like?
Drenched and Dancing
But if you could see the orange stains from mangoes under my fingernails, the reddening on my neck from the tropical sun, the chalk from blackboards and earth from kids’ feet and puppy paws on my pants, the timbre of my voice when I’m singing Tande’m tande’m, konnen konnen, you’d know I was doing all right, probably better than all right.
Hope this finds you feeling ALIVE, and well.
John.
…
For those of you with time and interest, here are a few more words…
Rubble After less than five hours in the air and five more on a bus, I found myself on the outskirts of a broken city. You’ve all seen the pictures: walls buckled and floors and ceilings stacked like pancakes, homes reduced to piles of cinderblocks, a poor city with no skyscrapers where you could see the stars at midnight turned into a burial ground for thousands upon thousands of people in about thirty seconds.
It makes you shake your head and gasp and wonder why. But I did not come here to shrug.
So, the next day, I led a team of about six students to do some manual labor in the neighborhood surrounding Louverture Cleary School. Six skinny Haitian kids in hard hats with wheelbarrows and shovels and a sledge hammer, with neighborhood youngsters looking on wide-eyed.
The outer wall of a house had fallen during the earthquake, cement and busted cinderblocks in a pile on the ground. We used the sledgehammer to break up the remnants of the wall into small pieces. We then filled the wheelbarrows to capacity, rolled them down the street, and dumped them in a 16’ x 16’ plot where the school was financing the construction of a new house.
It was something special to watch the team of young students lay the foundation for a new home with the rubble of an old one. Transformation.
The Oasis One afternoon earlier this week, the school was visited by a battalion of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army. I almost didn’t see them for their camouflage at first; really, but their M-4 assault rifles were kind of hard to miss once I got up close. These, along with their heavy packs and jackets, were laid in two long rows near the front gate.
After ten minutes, some soldiers were playing basketball with students, others were giving piggyback rides, playing games of monkey-in-the-middle with Army-Issue baseball caps, or having their tattoos examined by inquisitive children.
Talking to a soldier named Joey, he said he had been in Haiti since January 17th (though others had arrived only hours after the earthquake), and overall it was a good experience. For those who had not been deployed before, it was valuable practice in entering a foreign environment, trying to distribute food to large crowds of hungry people whose language you don’t speak, and assessing targets without the burden of an enemy threat. To those who had seen duty in Iraq, it was a pleasant reprieve. “Here,” one soldier said, with a Haitian six-year-old sitting on his shoulders, “no one is trying to kill you.”
The highlight for their battalion was, unanimously, coming to our school. They call it “The Oasis.” I was asking them if they’d sampled Haitian culture. Of course they weren’t allowed to sample the Barbaincourt, but they smoke the locally made cigarettes like chimneys. When asked if I’d tried the menthols, I said no: “I don’t get out much.”
Without missing a beat, amidst the sound of bouncing basketballs, laughter, and little running feet, a soldier from Montana looked me in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t want to.”
Aftershocks This week was to be a return to normalcy at the school. We were at our all-time high of student population since January 12th. Armed with chalk, textbook, and a year of experience, I was totally unmatched against Mother Nature.
The first aftershock woke me up, but I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Thought I was dreaming. The eerie feeling came when the earth stopped shaking but the building was still rumbling as the students stampeded out of their dorm rooms at 4:30 in the morning. It had been a 4.7, so I’m told.
The next night at 1:30 am, there was a 5.2 aftershock. The following day was one of my hardest in Haiti. I was teaching in the outdoor classroom situated immediately outside one of the girls’ dorms. How was I supposed to teach as my students kept looking over my shoulder to watch their classmates stream out the front gate with their bags packed? Some left because they were scared their dorm would fall down. Some left because their parents came to get them, or because all their peers were leaving, or because an aftershock was their version of a snow-day, an excuse to blow off class.
I was distraught; it felt like sand slipping through my fingers. There was one point where I almost cried, watching one of my brightest and most ebullient students head for home. “Kile w’ap vini anko (When will you come back)?” I asked her.
“M pa konnen (I don’t know),” she said.
“Dako. M’ap tann ou (Okay. I’ll be expecting you).”
The next day, I had four students in my Rheto (Juniors) religion class. My lesson plan went out the window, and we just talked soberly. After lunch, I was beat. The sun was too hard. The barometric pressure was too much. I was uninspired to lesson plan. I’d been shaken.
…
There is a pivotal battle at hand, a battle between ignorance and knowledge, between fear and courage. These seem clear-cut, to the outsider. But the battle between mind and heart is perhaps the most crucial, and the most opaque.
The radio programs in Haiti broadcast hearsay. This is ignorance. A soothsayer predicts an aftershock, and everyone believes them a prophet when the earth starts shaking. Problem is, people talk about aftershocks every day.
What we know is that our buildings are safe. We know this because multiple teams of expert engineers have come, checked them out, and told us this. It’s science. Some of the buildings are cracked, but the fissures are cosmetic, not structural.
A 4.0 or a 5.0 earthquake is not dangerous for us at this point. What is dangerous is a mob of people running for their lives, trampling one another. It takes courage sometimes to walk very slowly.
We can make charts of Richter scale stresses versus building materials’ durability, use physics to define the dangers. We can know that we are safe but not believe it. The head knows that a small aftershock will not bring these buildings down, but the heart has a good memory. It recalls the buildings in ruin, the loved ones crushed to death, the sheer panic of your world shaking on its axis.
To move on, we need to maintain a sense of normalcy. We cannot rebuild this country if we are living outside in tents and letting the piles of rubble become permanent fixtures, if we give up, and walk out the door.
But kids are kids.
If your family was mauled by bears, would you want to sleep anywhere where you know that a bear could waltz into your room in the middle of the night, rock your bed, breathe down your neck?
If your family drowned at sea, would you want to live on a boat?
Another question is: if we build temporary tent cities, and International aid groups come and supply fresh water to their inhabitants, then people are “relieved” after this natural disaster, right? But when do the aid groups pack up and leave this foreign land? When there is no longer a need? Guess what, people aren’t going to leave tent cities as long as there is fresh water for free. So, will the aid organizations pull out and leave people to die of thirst?
Maybe they’ll get wise, give people shovels, and help them dig wells.
…
Some of my students are translators at local hospitals. Patients come in, and the doctor says to my student, “Ask them what’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My house fell down, my children are all dead, I have no job, and my husband has abandoned me. Maybe he’s dead, too.”
“Okay, but I cannot tell the doctor that. You need to have some illness, some injury for this hospital to help you.”
“But I have none.”
“What did she say?”
“She said her heart hurts.”
…
It is hard to convince a heartbroken people to let the dead bury the dead. It is hard to convince foreigners to truly invest, and listen to what people need, and walk with them toward a better future, instead of handing out crutches, which create only dependency.
It is hard to convince students to sleep in rooms that shake like tombs when an aftershock hits.
It is hard, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. If we wait to rebuild, to transform our world, how long will we wait? If we wait to start class for one month, then we might have an aftershock in one month and one day. Of maybe in two hundred years.
We’re just going to have to learn to live in harmony with the Unknown.
Roadside Bonfires This year, the school is more intricately involved in the surrounding community. Besides rebuilding projects in the neighborhood, we do roadside cleanup. This is quite a task in Haiti, where there is no public sanitation. We go out with platoons of students wielding gloves and buckets and wheelbarrows. We pick up plastic bottles to recycle, metal and glass to bury in a huge hole we dig, and every kind of combustible trash known to man.
At the end of the day, we pile the burnable things by the road, douse it with some diesel fuel, and set a match to it.
This might make you cringe, but worrying about the ozone layer is a luxury we can’t afford around here, not yet.
Yesterday, I was accosted by two different Haitian men, neighbors of ours. I was a bit worried at first that people would complain about the smoke, or that the police would haul me away to some dark place. But these men wanted to shake my hand. One talked to me in French for about five minutes, about international politics, and why won’t the World Powers help Haiti get on its feet by ensuring democratic elections with candidates who aren’t corrupt bastards?
I told him that I don’t have much faith in governments. To change the world, I think, you shouldn’t start at the top, but at the bottom, with something as mundane as a notebook and a pen. My hope is in my students, the ones getting their hands dirty to make their country more beautiful one meter at a time.
The second man talked to me in Creole and invited me to come to a concert some time. He was a young guy with a Bob-Marley style cap. The next time we’re out cleaning, he said, he wants to get the whole neighborhood to help. He loves what we’re doing here. He wasn’t looking for a handout. Just a reason to believe that a verdant Haiti is still possible.
The good thing about being a volunteer at LCS is that you wear lots of hats (or spandex unitards under your drab business wear à la Superman). So burning trash helps me blow off steam after a frustrating day of false-starts in my classes, and I am renewed to help cook dinner and do the dishes, then tutor students in the evening. Which brings me to…
Palm Tree Silhouettes My favorite time of day is the evening. This is when the sharp sun softens and gives way to the glow of orangeish bulbs running on solar power.
It’s when I get to catch up with my friends on Haitian staff and practice trash-talking in Creole.
It’s when I get to wander around while students are studying, singing, or talking quietly (sometimes too loud, and I tell them to “pa fe dezòd”). Their voices get washed in a Caribbean sea breeze, mingled with muffled cricket chirps and mutts barking in the distance. Below the swaying palm tree silhouettes, I take the time to just sit down and be with them.
I sit with Melgraff, a sixième (sixth grade) student who wants to practice his English or just talk about the soccer game from earlier in the afternoon, or Mikerlyne, one of my students who wants to teach me Chemistry and tries to convince me that 75 degrees is cold, or Vania, a young woman, with precise soft-spoken English and a kickass smile who asks me why I came back to Haiti.
I give a meandering answer, which boils down to: because my heart wouldn’t shut up/ because I could. But maybe she already understands what I can’t articulate, because she smiles like a diamond and says, “I am very glad you are here.”
That is why I came back.
Timoun is the Creole word for “children” (it translates literally as Little People). This year, THP’s President’s wife is running a Timoun Program, which invites neighborhood kids from about three years old to about nine years old to come and eat lunch at our school, play on the playground, sometimes watch movies, and bathe on Fridays. Christina has been known to advocate for the children, retrieving them from orphanages, taking them to the hospital. Some of them call her “Ma.”
Yesterday, after I got done with teaching and burning trash, I was greeted by Roudna, a skinny four year-old with a smile twice as big as she is, running toward me with outstretched hands, leaping into my arms, and clinging to me with her legs around my waist and telling me to spin, spin, spin.
After a long and frustrating day, I am revitalized by being a sort of surrogate Uncle John the Human Jungle Gym. I’m fluent in Creole Kid Talk: “Pote’m” is “carry me,” “Pouse’m” is “push me” (on the swings), “kouri deye’m” is “run behind me (chase me)” and “gade’m” is “watch me.”
It was after lunch yesterday that I saw a small pack of tykes sitting in a row on a small wall. I walked down the line, giving high fives to tiny outstretched hands along the way.
I am blessed to have days with so many high points. It’s like the flippin’ Himalaya around here.
What Does Faith Look Like? I’m not sure, but I think you could make a strong argument for faith looking a lot like a roomful of eager young minds with their eyes fixed on you, faith that you’ll say something worth hearing.
Monday and Tuesday were beleaguered by minor after-quakes, but the rest of the week has been better.
Yesterday, I had a twazyèm (freshmen) class of about twenty students (lots better than four). It was my job to teach them religion. In a way, the pressure was off, since religion is not tested on their Baccalaureate exam, which determines if they will get into college or not. In another way, though, the pressure was on, because I am teaching a class that takes for subject matter the Divine and our immortal souls. (!?)
Here’s what we did: I had them sing “This Little Light of Mine.” They loved it. I know because I heard students singing it all over campus later in the day.
Then, we talked about Matthew 5:14-16, about letting our light shine. I asked them how do we do this? How can you tell who is a witness for Truth and grace? They brainstormed ideas: talking about God, following the Commandments, living a life of zeal, loving your neighbor, not kicking people.
I asked them to make an anagram—write their names vertically on a sheet of paper, and then take each letter in their name as the first in a word or phrase that answers the question: “How can I be a witness?”
They seemed to enjoy it, set right to work. I encouraged them to draw using crayons I’d brought, and I let them write in French or Creole if they couldn’t find the word they were looking for in English. For the last ten minutes of class, as they were finishing up, I played a song from a CD I’d brought: “Blessed to be a Witness” by Ben Harper.
Maybe they didn’t learn much about Religion, but it got their minds off of the earthquake and its aftermath for about forty minutes or so.
And it helped me learn their names. My goal is to learn the name of every student in the school. I’m almost there, if you round up.
…
The days are long. Between the many high points are lots of frustrating ones. Short on sleep because the power went out (which means my fan turned off and I drowned in sweat), I miss breakfast because Morning Prayer runs long and I have to go teach. I spend half the day wandering around to see which classes are unattended because Haitian staff are absent (for a multitude of reasons: because they must be home to take care of their families, because the schedule keeps changing as life keeps changing since the quake, because they forget, because they are afraid to teach in classrooms, who knows, etc.), and trying to keep the students in line. Power struggles, miscommunication, people not doing their jobs, kids causing trouble.
So, basically, daily life like everywhere else on the planet.
But I try to make the most of it. For example: when I find a room full of unsupervised students, I ask them what they’re supposed to be studying, to show me where they’re at in the book, if there’s a book. I’ve substitute-taught impromptu algebra, social science, literature, French, English, and sport classes with moderate success.
Dodgeball games and singing songs are what I can hang my hat on.
…
The volunteer corps this year is a great group six women and three men strong, plus myself, and I don’t see how this school could function without them.
I am finding my niche slowly but surely, and getting to know these good people. Already we have a certain understanding, an ineffable shared experience of Haiti, which has a lot to do with, but is not completely limited to, eating tree-fallen mangoes.
Drenched and Dancing Today, Friday, the Philo students were given the task of cleaning out the basin, an underground holding tank for water with a man-hole sized open in the top. This is where I draw buckets of water for my nightly bucket bath, when the rooftop cisterns run dry.
When I was making my rounds to do some substitute teaching, I came upon them working. Picture this:
A dozen kids soaking wet. After some had climbed down a ladder into the empty reservoir to scrub the walls and the bottom with towels and soap suds, some were disinclined to get wet. So, the others filled some buckets full of water from the pump’s spout, and soaked their classmates.
It turned into a regular water fight party, with dancing and singing of the school song in Spanish. I am proud to say that I ended up with a bucket of water dumped on my head, too. I even climbed down into the basin and helped sop up the last bits of water with a towel.
It blew my mind—if given this task in the USA, most people I know, myself included, would refuse. “Hell no, pay somebody else to do it. Or at least give me a sump pump or something.”
But these kids dove into the work with just some cloth and buckets and their bare hands, and they did a great job. And what’s more, they turned it into a jubilee.
And that is the lesson for today. Earthquakes happen. It is hard to make sense out of it, maybe impossible. But there is much work to be done. Together the load is not as heavy.
And if we are going to build our world anew, we’d better add plenty of Joy.
anpil men, chay pa lou
--With many hands, the load is not heavy.
Dear All,
I am alive and well in Haiti, grâce à Dieu. It would be hard for me to put the last two weeks into words.
If limited to only a few, I’d say:
Rubble
The Oasis
Aftershocks
Roadside Bonfires
Palm Tree Silhouettes
Timoun
What Does Faith Look Like?
Drenched and Dancing
But if you could see the orange stains from mangoes under my fingernails, the reddening on my neck from the tropical sun, the chalk from blackboards and earth from kids’ feet and puppy paws on my pants, the timbre of my voice when I’m singing Tande’m tande’m, konnen konnen, you’d know I was doing all right, probably better than all right.
Hope this finds you feeling ALIVE, and well.
John.
…
For those of you with time and interest, here are a few more words…
Rubble After less than five hours in the air and five more on a bus, I found myself on the outskirts of a broken city. You’ve all seen the pictures: walls buckled and floors and ceilings stacked like pancakes, homes reduced to piles of cinderblocks, a poor city with no skyscrapers where you could see the stars at midnight turned into a burial ground for thousands upon thousands of people in about thirty seconds.
It makes you shake your head and gasp and wonder why. But I did not come here to shrug.
So, the next day, I led a team of about six students to do some manual labor in the neighborhood surrounding Louverture Cleary School. Six skinny Haitian kids in hard hats with wheelbarrows and shovels and a sledge hammer, with neighborhood youngsters looking on wide-eyed.
The outer wall of a house had fallen during the earthquake, cement and busted cinderblocks in a pile on the ground. We used the sledgehammer to break up the remnants of the wall into small pieces. We then filled the wheelbarrows to capacity, rolled them down the street, and dumped them in a 16’ x 16’ plot where the school was financing the construction of a new house.
It was something special to watch the team of young students lay the foundation for a new home with the rubble of an old one. Transformation.
The Oasis One afternoon earlier this week, the school was visited by a battalion of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army. I almost didn’t see them for their camouflage at first; really, but their M-4 assault rifles were kind of hard to miss once I got up close. These, along with their heavy packs and jackets, were laid in two long rows near the front gate.
After ten minutes, some soldiers were playing basketball with students, others were giving piggyback rides, playing games of monkey-in-the-middle with Army-Issue baseball caps, or having their tattoos examined by inquisitive children.
Talking to a soldier named Joey, he said he had been in Haiti since January 17th (though others had arrived only hours after the earthquake), and overall it was a good experience. For those who had not been deployed before, it was valuable practice in entering a foreign environment, trying to distribute food to large crowds of hungry people whose language you don’t speak, and assessing targets without the burden of an enemy threat. To those who had seen duty in Iraq, it was a pleasant reprieve. “Here,” one soldier said, with a Haitian six-year-old sitting on his shoulders, “no one is trying to kill you.”
The highlight for their battalion was, unanimously, coming to our school. They call it “The Oasis.” I was asking them if they’d sampled Haitian culture. Of course they weren’t allowed to sample the Barbaincourt, but they smoke the locally made cigarettes like chimneys. When asked if I’d tried the menthols, I said no: “I don’t get out much.”
Without missing a beat, amidst the sound of bouncing basketballs, laughter, and little running feet, a soldier from Montana looked me in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t want to.”
Aftershocks This week was to be a return to normalcy at the school. We were at our all-time high of student population since January 12th. Armed with chalk, textbook, and a year of experience, I was totally unmatched against Mother Nature.
The first aftershock woke me up, but I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Thought I was dreaming. The eerie feeling came when the earth stopped shaking but the building was still rumbling as the students stampeded out of their dorm rooms at 4:30 in the morning. It had been a 4.7, so I’m told.
The next night at 1:30 am, there was a 5.2 aftershock. The following day was one of my hardest in Haiti. I was teaching in the outdoor classroom situated immediately outside one of the girls’ dorms. How was I supposed to teach as my students kept looking over my shoulder to watch their classmates stream out the front gate with their bags packed? Some left because they were scared their dorm would fall down. Some left because their parents came to get them, or because all their peers were leaving, or because an aftershock was their version of a snow-day, an excuse to blow off class.
I was distraught; it felt like sand slipping through my fingers. There was one point where I almost cried, watching one of my brightest and most ebullient students head for home. “Kile w’ap vini anko (When will you come back)?” I asked her.
“M pa konnen (I don’t know),” she said.
“Dako. M’ap tann ou (Okay. I’ll be expecting you).”
The next day, I had four students in my Rheto (Juniors) religion class. My lesson plan went out the window, and we just talked soberly. After lunch, I was beat. The sun was too hard. The barometric pressure was too much. I was uninspired to lesson plan. I’d been shaken.
…
There is a pivotal battle at hand, a battle between ignorance and knowledge, between fear and courage. These seem clear-cut, to the outsider. But the battle between mind and heart is perhaps the most crucial, and the most opaque.
The radio programs in Haiti broadcast hearsay. This is ignorance. A soothsayer predicts an aftershock, and everyone believes them a prophet when the earth starts shaking. Problem is, people talk about aftershocks every day.
What we know is that our buildings are safe. We know this because multiple teams of expert engineers have come, checked them out, and told us this. It’s science. Some of the buildings are cracked, but the fissures are cosmetic, not structural.
A 4.0 or a 5.0 earthquake is not dangerous for us at this point. What is dangerous is a mob of people running for their lives, trampling one another. It takes courage sometimes to walk very slowly.
We can make charts of Richter scale stresses versus building materials’ durability, use physics to define the dangers. We can know that we are safe but not believe it. The head knows that a small aftershock will not bring these buildings down, but the heart has a good memory. It recalls the buildings in ruin, the loved ones crushed to death, the sheer panic of your world shaking on its axis.
To move on, we need to maintain a sense of normalcy. We cannot rebuild this country if we are living outside in tents and letting the piles of rubble become permanent fixtures, if we give up, and walk out the door.
But kids are kids.
If your family was mauled by bears, would you want to sleep anywhere where you know that a bear could waltz into your room in the middle of the night, rock your bed, breathe down your neck?
If your family drowned at sea, would you want to live on a boat?
Another question is: if we build temporary tent cities, and International aid groups come and supply fresh water to their inhabitants, then people are “relieved” after this natural disaster, right? But when do the aid groups pack up and leave this foreign land? When there is no longer a need? Guess what, people aren’t going to leave tent cities as long as there is fresh water for free. So, will the aid organizations pull out and leave people to die of thirst?
Maybe they’ll get wise, give people shovels, and help them dig wells.
…
Some of my students are translators at local hospitals. Patients come in, and the doctor says to my student, “Ask them what’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My house fell down, my children are all dead, I have no job, and my husband has abandoned me. Maybe he’s dead, too.”
“Okay, but I cannot tell the doctor that. You need to have some illness, some injury for this hospital to help you.”
“But I have none.”
“What did she say?”
“She said her heart hurts.”
…
It is hard to convince a heartbroken people to let the dead bury the dead. It is hard to convince foreigners to truly invest, and listen to what people need, and walk with them toward a better future, instead of handing out crutches, which create only dependency.
It is hard to convince students to sleep in rooms that shake like tombs when an aftershock hits.
It is hard, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. If we wait to rebuild, to transform our world, how long will we wait? If we wait to start class for one month, then we might have an aftershock in one month and one day. Of maybe in two hundred years.
We’re just going to have to learn to live in harmony with the Unknown.
Roadside Bonfires This year, the school is more intricately involved in the surrounding community. Besides rebuilding projects in the neighborhood, we do roadside cleanup. This is quite a task in Haiti, where there is no public sanitation. We go out with platoons of students wielding gloves and buckets and wheelbarrows. We pick up plastic bottles to recycle, metal and glass to bury in a huge hole we dig, and every kind of combustible trash known to man.
At the end of the day, we pile the burnable things by the road, douse it with some diesel fuel, and set a match to it.
This might make you cringe, but worrying about the ozone layer is a luxury we can’t afford around here, not yet.
Yesterday, I was accosted by two different Haitian men, neighbors of ours. I was a bit worried at first that people would complain about the smoke, or that the police would haul me away to some dark place. But these men wanted to shake my hand. One talked to me in French for about five minutes, about international politics, and why won’t the World Powers help Haiti get on its feet by ensuring democratic elections with candidates who aren’t corrupt bastards?
I told him that I don’t have much faith in governments. To change the world, I think, you shouldn’t start at the top, but at the bottom, with something as mundane as a notebook and a pen. My hope is in my students, the ones getting their hands dirty to make their country more beautiful one meter at a time.
The second man talked to me in Creole and invited me to come to a concert some time. He was a young guy with a Bob-Marley style cap. The next time we’re out cleaning, he said, he wants to get the whole neighborhood to help. He loves what we’re doing here. He wasn’t looking for a handout. Just a reason to believe that a verdant Haiti is still possible.
The good thing about being a volunteer at LCS is that you wear lots of hats (or spandex unitards under your drab business wear à la Superman). So burning trash helps me blow off steam after a frustrating day of false-starts in my classes, and I am renewed to help cook dinner and do the dishes, then tutor students in the evening. Which brings me to…
Palm Tree Silhouettes My favorite time of day is the evening. This is when the sharp sun softens and gives way to the glow of orangeish bulbs running on solar power.
It’s when I get to catch up with my friends on Haitian staff and practice trash-talking in Creole.
It’s when I get to wander around while students are studying, singing, or talking quietly (sometimes too loud, and I tell them to “pa fe dezòd”). Their voices get washed in a Caribbean sea breeze, mingled with muffled cricket chirps and mutts barking in the distance. Below the swaying palm tree silhouettes, I take the time to just sit down and be with them.
I sit with Melgraff, a sixième (sixth grade) student who wants to practice his English or just talk about the soccer game from earlier in the afternoon, or Mikerlyne, one of my students who wants to teach me Chemistry and tries to convince me that 75 degrees is cold, or Vania, a young woman, with precise soft-spoken English and a kickass smile who asks me why I came back to Haiti.
I give a meandering answer, which boils down to: because my heart wouldn’t shut up/ because I could. But maybe she already understands what I can’t articulate, because she smiles like a diamond and says, “I am very glad you are here.”
That is why I came back.
Timoun is the Creole word for “children” (it translates literally as Little People). This year, THP’s President’s wife is running a Timoun Program, which invites neighborhood kids from about three years old to about nine years old to come and eat lunch at our school, play on the playground, sometimes watch movies, and bathe on Fridays. Christina has been known to advocate for the children, retrieving them from orphanages, taking them to the hospital. Some of them call her “Ma.”
Yesterday, after I got done with teaching and burning trash, I was greeted by Roudna, a skinny four year-old with a smile twice as big as she is, running toward me with outstretched hands, leaping into my arms, and clinging to me with her legs around my waist and telling me to spin, spin, spin.
After a long and frustrating day, I am revitalized by being a sort of surrogate Uncle John the Human Jungle Gym. I’m fluent in Creole Kid Talk: “Pote’m” is “carry me,” “Pouse’m” is “push me” (on the swings), “kouri deye’m” is “run behind me (chase me)” and “gade’m” is “watch me.”
It was after lunch yesterday that I saw a small pack of tykes sitting in a row on a small wall. I walked down the line, giving high fives to tiny outstretched hands along the way.
I am blessed to have days with so many high points. It’s like the flippin’ Himalaya around here.
What Does Faith Look Like? I’m not sure, but I think you could make a strong argument for faith looking a lot like a roomful of eager young minds with their eyes fixed on you, faith that you’ll say something worth hearing.
Monday and Tuesday were beleaguered by minor after-quakes, but the rest of the week has been better.
Yesterday, I had a twazyèm (freshmen) class of about twenty students (lots better than four). It was my job to teach them religion. In a way, the pressure was off, since religion is not tested on their Baccalaureate exam, which determines if they will get into college or not. In another way, though, the pressure was on, because I am teaching a class that takes for subject matter the Divine and our immortal souls. (!?)
Here’s what we did: I had them sing “This Little Light of Mine.” They loved it. I know because I heard students singing it all over campus later in the day.
Then, we talked about Matthew 5:14-16, about letting our light shine. I asked them how do we do this? How can you tell who is a witness for Truth and grace? They brainstormed ideas: talking about God, following the Commandments, living a life of zeal, loving your neighbor, not kicking people.
I asked them to make an anagram—write their names vertically on a sheet of paper, and then take each letter in their name as the first in a word or phrase that answers the question: “How can I be a witness?”
They seemed to enjoy it, set right to work. I encouraged them to draw using crayons I’d brought, and I let them write in French or Creole if they couldn’t find the word they were looking for in English. For the last ten minutes of class, as they were finishing up, I played a song from a CD I’d brought: “Blessed to be a Witness” by Ben Harper.
Maybe they didn’t learn much about Religion, but it got their minds off of the earthquake and its aftermath for about forty minutes or so.
And it helped me learn their names. My goal is to learn the name of every student in the school. I’m almost there, if you round up.
…
The days are long. Between the many high points are lots of frustrating ones. Short on sleep because the power went out (which means my fan turned off and I drowned in sweat), I miss breakfast because Morning Prayer runs long and I have to go teach. I spend half the day wandering around to see which classes are unattended because Haitian staff are absent (for a multitude of reasons: because they must be home to take care of their families, because the schedule keeps changing as life keeps changing since the quake, because they forget, because they are afraid to teach in classrooms, who knows, etc.), and trying to keep the students in line. Power struggles, miscommunication, people not doing their jobs, kids causing trouble.
So, basically, daily life like everywhere else on the planet.
But I try to make the most of it. For example: when I find a room full of unsupervised students, I ask them what they’re supposed to be studying, to show me where they’re at in the book, if there’s a book. I’ve substitute-taught impromptu algebra, social science, literature, French, English, and sport classes with moderate success.
Dodgeball games and singing songs are what I can hang my hat on.
…
The volunteer corps this year is a great group six women and three men strong, plus myself, and I don’t see how this school could function without them.
I am finding my niche slowly but surely, and getting to know these good people. Already we have a certain understanding, an ineffable shared experience of Haiti, which has a lot to do with, but is not completely limited to, eating tree-fallen mangoes.
Drenched and Dancing Today, Friday, the Philo students were given the task of cleaning out the basin, an underground holding tank for water with a man-hole sized open in the top. This is where I draw buckets of water for my nightly bucket bath, when the rooftop cisterns run dry.
When I was making my rounds to do some substitute teaching, I came upon them working. Picture this:
A dozen kids soaking wet. After some had climbed down a ladder into the empty reservoir to scrub the walls and the bottom with towels and soap suds, some were disinclined to get wet. So, the others filled some buckets full of water from the pump’s spout, and soaked their classmates.
It turned into a regular water fight party, with dancing and singing of the school song in Spanish. I am proud to say that I ended up with a bucket of water dumped on my head, too. I even climbed down into the basin and helped sop up the last bits of water with a towel.
It blew my mind—if given this task in the USA, most people I know, myself included, would refuse. “Hell no, pay somebody else to do it. Or at least give me a sump pump or something.”
But these kids dove into the work with just some cloth and buckets and their bare hands, and they did a great job. And what’s more, they turned it into a jubilee.
And that is the lesson for today. Earthquakes happen. It is hard to make sense out of it, maybe impossible. But there is much work to be done. Together the load is not as heavy.
And if we are going to build our world anew, we’d better add plenty of Joy.
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