It's All in the Circuitry

     Here you see our last science lab in physics:  Parallel circuits.  The tiny bulbs shine more brightly when they're wired parallel.  Widlyne and I usually let the kids do their own setups in little groups, but this day we wanted to use a 9 volt battery and see how many flashlight bulbs they could light up.  We pictured a whole bunch of burned out flashlight bulbs if we let them work individually, so we did one group project.  It was like Christmas, but 90 degrees out.  They lit 12 bulbs, and we had to quit because time ran out.

     This was a wonderful series of labs that were donated by Jeff Remington, my course advisor at Lebanon Valley College.  The students don't get to do many experiments in Haitian schools, and they got a lot out of the experience.  It was a pleasure to see them get involved in their learning.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

     If you have never taught a kindergarten group to do the Itsy Bitsy Spider, you owe it to yourself to try some day. What a triumph when they finally coordinate their pinky fingers and thumbs and make their hands 'walk' up that rainspout.  How many little Bons Samaritains have greeted me out and about in the market, by showing me their spiderwalk!

      Of course this video represents even more of a triumph, since they sing it in English. Their favorite line- watch for it- is when the spider gets washed out.

High Up in the Mountains

I've just come back from a small town high in the mountains. Kenscoff is east of Port au Prince, and up a lot of switchbacks from Petionville, which is already up above Port au Prince. It is just beautiful:  Cool, green, rainy. Not what I've become used to! The mountains are so high that the clouds can surround you when you walk. 

On the way uphill, during a walk yesterday, I had the pleasure of talking with 4 little kindergarten boys on their way to school. We begin in French "Are you kindergarteners?  Are you guys brothers or friends? Do you go to school together every day? Are the little girls (coming up the path) your sisters?"  They are not used to being interrogated like this on a Tuesday morning commute, so they are kind of shy. Stick with the video, and you will see them run down the hill. And I do mean down.

More on Kenscoff later.

More Rain Than They Can Use at One Time

The last week or so it has been really nice, although quite hot. But back in the middle of May (while I was apparently on a writer's strike) it stormed. And stormed and stormed. We seemed to have a bad one every night for nearly a week.  

On Wednesday May 13 in the afternoon I went south of town on the tap tap, and when it came time to come home, thank goodness, I got a ride in a car. On the way back it started to rain so intensely that the streets filled with over a foot of water, rushing and brown with the mud.  There were people walking beside our car in a strong current, up to their calves.  In front of me through the driving rain I could see a tap tap that had 5 guys hanging onto the tailgate; they were standing on the bumper.  Every time they went through a dip, their feet were in the water.  There had to be almost 30 people loaded on there, and remember a tap tap is a small pickup truck.  All I could think was, I was going to go on that tap tap. 

On the south side of town, there are lots of houses that are built going right up a steep hill. When it rains, mud flows down, between the houses and the alleyways, so fast that it drags big stones with it. The following Sunday I went to Amani Beach with some friends, and the road to the south was tan with dried mud, and there were still big rocks laying everywhere, also wheelbarrow loads of mud that had been shoveled from the road and put in piles alongside. That was the morning.

Then that Sunday night it stormed again. And Monday I got a letter from a pastor here in St.-Marc, Gary Walker, in which he said there were dozens of people in his congregation and among his acquaintance who had lost everything. The homes of some were no longer liveable. Others still had their rooms, but the mud ran through them and took everything. Another local pastor called him to say that he had a group of people who had to stay in his church overnight because their homes filled with mud.  The Walkers gave him a 100-lb. bag of rice and another one of beans to feed them.

 On Tuesday the 19th about 1/4 of our kids did not show up for school on account of cleaning up the mud. Some of the teachers were late.  A few were not wearing their uniform; I wondered about how much mud they had in their homes. 

Above is a picture that Reverend Walker sent out, of a road after the water goes down, to show you the kind of stuff that gets dragged.  You can just imagine if your doorsill opens onto a road like that, what the inside of your home will look like if there is a storm.  

President Preval even paid a visit to St-Marc to see the damage.  Things seem to have calmed down since that week, storm-wise, but everyone is indeed wondering what will happen next, when hurricane season begins in earnest.

B List in the Market

Every time I pass through the market, which is to say every day I leave the school, I am always amazed by the variety of what you can buy there. Everything and anything is found in the market.

It struck me that the letter B alone stands for a huge number of items:

Blue jeans, belts, belt buckles, batteries, battery chargers, baking soda and baking powder, buttons, blouses, Barbie dolls, teddy bears, bras, barrettes, blenders, bicycles, baskets, buckets, basins, brooms and brushes, all their school books (bootleg photocopies) and the bookbags to carry them, soccer balls, glass balls for Christmas trees, boots, beans, bran, bread, bananas, beds, bedding, bath towels and all bath products, bakeware, bowls, and my all-time favorite: Bread machines, a popular item in a land with intermittent electricity coupled with low bread consumption.

Walking along and looking at the astounding variety, I have to wonder at the provenance of all this stuff. Some of it is made here (the beds, for example), and some of the things are new, made in China- plastics, some clothing, baby items. But most of the non-food items are clearly the detritus of hundreds of thousands of North American yard sales and second-hand stores. How does it get here? I have heard all kinds of prices on shipping cargo containers, upwards to $6,000 for just one container.  How does that figure into me buying the complete, hardback compendium of all the Curious George books for one dollar? John Berendt's book on Venice? Sets of Pfaltzgraff, cellophane packages of faux hair for hair extensions, big rolls of wiring (only slightly used) for your new home? 

In the morning men with wheelbarrows are everywhere, trucking the stuff out for the day. Sometimes there are groups of vendors, mostly women, gathered around the backs of tractor-trailers. I can't tell if they already know which stuff is theirs, or if they are waiting to bid on merchandise, like some kind of a wholesale auction. All through the market, around 6 AM, ladies will be putting their sheets out on the ground and opening up their boxes, getting out their particular specialty, housewares, tools, clothing items, plastics, tschotskes, baby things. 

It appears to be the most popular industry/business of the town.  Where does it come from? And who pays to bring it here? 

An Unexpected Visitor

The other night about 10PM I wanted a drink of water.  As there was no electricity, I decided to go downstairs in the dark by using the handrail.   (I know, I know. Well, it won't happen again.)  When I went to open the iron gate I keep closed at the top of the stairs, Something in the dark hopped up and scrabbled all around my ankle, I jumped and yelped and then It flew into my room, where I could hear it banging around in the dark.

I decided it must be a bat; it was probably exhausted from trying to get out of the stairwell, and was just laying there catching its breath and making a getaway plan. Now, what to do? I had left my flashlights in my room, where the "bat" was now residing.

Wilson to the rescue. God love that man. This is not the first time that I got him out of bed at night with a problem real or imagined. And he has always been very phlegmatic and kind, even though we do not speak each others' language.

So Wilson came upstairs to the apartment, we went into my room and got two flashlights and we looked all over for a bat. Nothing. I decided I was safe under my mosquito netting, and Wilson went back to his place.  In the night, I was awakened by the sound of it flinging itself against the windowscreen. It did sound large for a bat, but I couldn't imagine what else could be bouncing off the walls like it seemed to be doing.  After I heard it trying to escape, once everything was silent, I got up and took down one of the screens in the hopes it would fly away.

In the morning we joked about it, and I told Wilson and Meritesse I thought it must have gotten away. Then, in the afternoon, I went into the back of my closet for something- and here was this little cat sitting on a shelf! 

Was he ever happy to get outside again.  And was I ever glad that I was not going to be surprised by finding a bat hiding inside one of my shirts.

A Visit: Going for Some Gâteau and Cremasse

Yesterday, Monday May 18, was important for 2 reasons. First, May 18 is flag day here in Haiti, a national holiday. Second, it was the day following First Holy Communion in the parish.  224 kids made their communion, and I did not know it when I went to mass, but it is tradition that the day after First Communion, they all come together again, in all their finery, and receive communion again. This time, a lot of them come alone, since it is Monday and many parents are back at work.

This particular Monday, a lot of them arrived late. The rain here has been brutal, and a lot of these kids clambered through some incredibly muddy streets and alleys to arrive at church, every one of them still looking beautiful, perfectly white and lovely in their gown or white shirt. 

After mass I was talking to Sister Mary and a girl came up and said Liz! to me. I thought at first she was Philomène,  a little girl I met in the market, who had appendicitis last summer when I did. Her face fell a second, and she said, no!  I am from Bons Samaritains!

Bons Samaritains is having their own separate communion at the end of this month, when Dr. Mortel comes to town, and I had not realized that some of our kids had gone through the church program.  I commented on how lovely she looked.  They wear long dresses, as though for a wedding, and headpieces, too.

I talked some more with Sister, and then as I was walking out, here she was, the little Communicant, waiting for me at the gates.  She took my hand and we started to walk up the street together, and she said, “I’ll walk you home.”

  I asked about her big day yesterday.  She was so happy.  She had a cake.  I asked, “And a special dinner, too?” Oh, yes, they had meat (a little sigh and a smile.) 

Having a conversation like this is very humbling indeed; she was walking along with me, holding my hand, and I felt unworthy.   Compared to hers, my life is so effortless and easy.  I felt bad that she would go out of her way, since she was wearing a long white dress, with lace at the sleeves and hem, and we were walking around a lot of mud puddles.  One of the motorcycle guys was eventually going to fly by and splatter her with mud.  I said, look, you shouldn’t walk me home!  Don’t walk further than you have to!

Then, did I want to walk with her?  Well, sure,  I could walk with her! So we turned the other way, toward the market.  Then she said, I know!  Would you like to come to my house?  And have some cake and Cremasse?  I said, “Real Cremasse, with the cream(and the rum)?” “ Yes!”  “O-kay!”  I said. “I would love to share a little bit of your Cremasse.” 

So hand in hand we walked through the market, taking care to avoid all the low spots.  After awhile we turned back an alley, perhaps 4 or 5 feet wide.  It was concave and muddier than the street, and the houses were very poor.  Then after 50 yards we turned off again into a smaller alleyway, between houses and fences.  We were getting into desperate territory.  A mix of rusty corrugated iron, boards, wire, chicken wire, broken stuff, people standing around staring. Very rough.  At one point my little friend slid between a concrete wall and a gatepost, an opening maybe 6” wide, and kept going, (dress still white) and  I had to call out,  “I am too fat for that!” I had to take a long way around which involved a gate and a puddle. I skirted the edge as best I could. More mud, another turn and another, the way getting narrower and narrower, and then we were walking around a hole that someone had dug in the middle of all this mud as a kind of neighborhood landfill.

Then we entered her family’s compound.  It was an open courtyard at the center, maybe 15 feet by 20 feet.  Her extended family was all there; I met her grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles, mom and dad. There were a lot of little cousins, and her little sister- I think. It is hard not knowing créole at a time like this.

They had  so little.  The families each had a room or two, which opened onto the yard. Everything was dirt, the yard and the floors to the houses, which you could see through the doorway.  And of course, it was all wet, having rained buckets the night before.  I was given a chair, so I sat down, under a little roof, and they all stood, except for the 3 or 4 that sat in the remaining chairs. There were about 10 or 12 people standing around, all looking at me.  I noticed guys up on the neighboring roofs looking down at us.

My student brought out a piece of cake and a cup of cremasse.  The cremasse was really good and I asked if they had made it.  Her grandmother said yes!  So I asked what was in it.  As she was telling me, I was trying to repeat what she said.  She told me coco-eh,  (cocoanut) and I said, “coco?” without the “-eh.”  Ah, apparently an obscenity, as 15 people promptly burst out laughing.  I said “Oops! I’m sorry!” but no one offered to enlighten me.  I will have to ask around.  

The cake was good, too.  It occurred to me that the kids must have only had a little taste of the cake, for there to be any left over like this, and I started to break off little pieces and offer them to the kids standing around.  Some of the little kids had clothing on, some only had shirts on.  I think one or two might have been naked. They were very dirty from the mud, and very grateful for the cake.  One little girl snatched her piece away and ran into her house, as if she were afraid I might change my mind.  We all laughed at that.

How was her communion dress so white?  Where on earth did she keep it?  It was still white after walking around and serving me the cake.  I would have had 20 spots on it by then, after all we’d come through to get there.  When I was done I thanked them, and she walked me back out to the market.  She was going to walk me home, but I assured her I knew the way from there. 

It rained really hard again last night.  Tuesday morning about 1/4 of our kids were not at school, on account of the mud coming into their homes.  I thought sure she would be among those missing, but there she was, as beautiful and as kempt as ever, down to the earrings in her ears.  She thanked me for visiting.  Absolutely humbling.