A Visit by the Sea

  Today I decided to go for a visit down by the beach.  Some of you may remember that two weeks ago while driving us back from mass at the outlying chapels,  Father Alcide stopped off at a parish family who lives a little bit north of town along the beach.  So today I walked and walked, and there was the gate, and I went in, and the oldest daugher, Linda, remembered me and I asked her if I could visit a little bit, and she said yes. 

   There is a seawall now, about 8 feet high, and Sister Mary said that it was built 3 or 4 years ago to protect the coast after some bad storms destroyed houses.  At the time she told me this, she looked down from the top of the wall and said, "We're miles from the sea, here!"  I said I thought I might be able to climb down someplace.  Sister said she thought her climbing days were over.  I asked the girls if we could go down onto the beach. (There was a big black pig down there, by the way, poking in the debris. I thought the children were a lot more photogenic and fun.) They said "Sure!" and just like that they all three scampered down. Like little mountain goats.  I went down very gingerly and I thought there might be problems getting back up, but I decided to worry about that later.

  At first it was just Linda and her little sisters, then about a half hour later their big brother Jeff came home. He is 13 and attends school up the street from  me, at the school facing the Place where I watched Carnaval one night.  Everyone refers to this school as "The Brothers." It is run by the Order of Cluny, I believe, and there are some Brothers who teach or administer in the school.

  I don't know if it is the excellent teaching he gets at his school, or his innate intelligence and curiosity, but I was blown away by Jeff today.  His real name, he told me, is Jefferson, because his father loves history, and that is the name of the President who wrote the Declaration of Independence.  Then we had a talk about presidents, and he asked me what I thought of President Obama. I said we are all hopeful that he will be a good president. "But what about that cartoon this week, of the policeman shooting the monkey, and saying it was Obama?"

  Wow. I said I could not account for it at all, I thought it was terrible. Then I explained to him the original story behind the cartoon, about the pet monkey that went crazy. "Oh, I know," he said. "In Connecticut."  I almost fell over.  I had forgotten it was Connecticut where that happened.  He said, "Connecticut is an indigenous name."  And it went like that all afternoon. I can't say I understood everything he said, but I think he must be brilliant.  How many American 13-year-olds followed the news that closely this week? (Or could tell you the origin of the name Connecticut?)

    We talked about the environment here in Haiti.  He agreed that many things needed improvement. I asked him what he thought the problem was, and I think he said it was that too many Haitians want stuff. I forget the word he used for it, but it implied consumerism, the hankering after better things, like so many of us do sometimes, and ignoring the things closer to home that need to get done.

   There is a town beach, it turns out, another mile north of them, called Gros Roche, big Rock.  It costs money to go, but Jeff thought it might be better to go up there if I wanted to swim. So he walked me to the beach and we checked it out. 50 Gourdes, $1.25 a person. 

   So I invited Jeff and his sisters to go to the beach tomorrow with me.  Their mother was a little suspicious when I asked, I think, but she gave her permission. So that's the plan, and maybe tomorrow at this time I will be sending you a picture of my first swim in the Caribbean Sea.

   Oh, and I did climb back up the seawall from the beach, with a little help from my friends.

 

Charcoal Sellers in the Market

  Here is a short video of the marketplace directly in front of the school gates.  There are charcoal sellers here. Every day they come in from the country, sometimes with the charcoal loaded on little pack horses or a donkey. More often you'll see someone with one of those big plastic feed-store 100 pound grain bags, only filled with charcoal and balanced sideways on their head.

One day I took a long walk and saw a woman and her daughter walking ahead of me.  It was during school hours, so the daughter was obviously unable to go to school. They were charcoal sellers, hoping to sell door to door, instead of sitting in the market.  The competition for this has to be ferocious.  I walked all the way up a long hill, at least a quarter of a mile, maybe longer, and they did, too. When I arrived back on Pivert, the main street I had started on, there they were, mother and daughter.  The mother's bag of charcoal was about 4 feet wide and 2 feet high, packed solid. The daughter's was about half that.  The daughter was about 10 years old and it made me feel sad to know that she was out working that hard at such a young age.  I thought about my little girls at that age and the things we did together.  And I don't believe they had sold any at all, judging by the look of their bags.

 I am experimenting with video. I have lots of it, but I can't upload a very high quality.  Dave, our school's technology coordinator, kindly gave me some suggestions when we talked last Friday. I know the video on this is a little blurry, but the audio is pretty good, and if you only knew what a triumph and how many hours of experimentation it represents.  I promise I will find that tipping point, a file that is small enough to send to you but large enough to be seen!

If my Mom Can Skype, You Can Skype

  Here is a picture of my mom I took this weekend while we were talking on Skype.  When she heard about it she went out and got a new computer so she could keep in touch.  Every so often I've been able to introduce some of my students- and one day the principal- to family members when they've been available. One of my projects is to help the students learn to use more of the fantastic technology they have at their disposal. Last week I ran into a technical difficulty; my audio was completely gone.  Thursday was the students' big Mardi Gras celebration- called Carnaval in Haiti-- and when I went to put the festivities on Skype so that students in Pennsylvania could join in, they weren't able to hear a thing. Fortunately, on Friday my tech coordinator back in Pennsylvania was able to help me fix it.  He walked me through all the sound settings on my laptop, and nothing seemed amiss, so he had me turn everything off and reset it, and Voilà! Sound!  And we did it via Skype, since I could still hear him and follow all his directions.

  When I explained about the stadium speakers down in the school courtyard and the deafening noise coming out of them, Dave surmised that my system probably shut down due to the overload.  Speaking of which, I went out to the town Carnaval last night in the plaza (Place, en français) at the end of my street, where there are 4 or 5 stages, each with DJs and stadium-sized speakers, pretty nearly all of them amped up and going continuously. Twice, at the start of the evening, the transformers blew out and the Place was black- except for one stage at the far end.  Those guys had their act together and had generators for their electricity.  Not only did workmen have to fix the transformers, the streetlights were blown as well, and a truck inched around through the crowd (think Times Square, New Year's Eve) and - no cleats on boots- at each light a guy put up a huge extension ladder and climbed up, right over the crowd. For some reason he not only changed the bulb each time, but the entire arm and light fixture as well.  Which had to be a good 3 or 4 feet long and be fairly heavy.  OSHA would have been, as the saying goes, all over them.  

  A few notes here about Carnaval in Haiti.  St Marc's version is not quite as colorful as pictures I've seen of Port au Prince's Carnaval.  (Think Brazil) There are people who dress up here, but the most colorful costumes you see are the "island girl" Indian native outfits, or the groups of people who dress up in the same color Tshirt and parade together.  The groups seem to be social groups and school groups, things like that.  Some just get together with a few musicians and they dance.  The dancing and parading is slow, it's more about the dancing than going the distance.  The music is not fancy, drums and Caribbean instruments, and maybe some saxophones and a trombone or two-- but nothing very musical. It's mostly a beat and a rhythm, and they march around town, filling the streets as they go.  Some are fancier and have floats.  Businesses sponsor them and some of these are quite large and have big sound systems on them.  Sometimes it is just a sound system that the dancers pull along as they go.

  Something really funny last night in the Place was that all these people, I am guessing at least a few thousand, were crammed in there and  I thought they were really packed as tightly as they could be.  Then from down in the corner I'd see movement, and all of a sudden there would be this huge float inching into the Place. Pulled by a tractor-trailer. With dancers behind it.  And darned if the crowd didn't part like the Red Sea, and this parade would inch its way through and go off into a side street.  And several times it happened that there were two parades at once, heading right towards each other.  Then there would be a huge laying on of horns (Haitian drivers are big on laying on the horn) until one would inch aside, and they somehow would miraculously pass each other and go off in their opposite directions.

Food, Redux

    

Food  here in St. Marc seems plentiful. On nearly every street corner and all through the blocks in between here in the market district, people have kettles simmering and you smell things cooking.  Chickens run everywhere, so I guess it is quite fresh.  I have seen larger chicken legs for sale at the butchers' in the market, but what I have eaten that has been prepared for me here has always been very athletic, streetside chicken, I am pretty sure. I am basing this on the conditioning that the muscles have obviously had; none of your flabby, indolent chickens such as I am used to back home.  The exception to this is the rotisserie chicken at Foun's.  That chicken falls apart in your mouth. 

   I've been having a little difficulty managing in the marketplace. The supermarket is all fixed prices, so no problem there, but the market has just been a quagmire for me.  My son Isaac has advised me that one of my problems is 'cutting to the chase.' (He is a movie director.)  They sense my desperation.  Isaac says, "Mom, you don't go right to the thing you want. They know that you must need it, and mean to buy it, and of course they're going to raise the price."  Add this to the fact that I am obviously a foreigner and that word got around that I paid triple for a grapefruit the day before, you can see that it has been getting harder and harder for me to go in there and come out with anything unless I wanted to pay the equivalent of $2.00 for a tomato.

   Last week I sent two little girls to get me six eggs and I was so pleased with the results that I was getting ready to send them again this weekend, and Elizabeth, the school secretary, said the school would really rather one of the adults go.  So I gave Elizabeth my list, bless her!, and 100 gourdes.  This is $2.50.  She and Sister Marie, the principal, checked my list over, and Elizabeth wasn't sure she could buy the things on my list for 100 gourdes. But Sister Marie thought she could.  The picture you see at the top of this post is a still life of all the things Elizabeth bought for me last Saturday with 100 gourdes. She bought much more than I expected.

   I have a shopping postscript to add to this.  On Monday I was out for a walk and passed through the market on the way back to the school. It was 5 o'clock and most of the people were packing to go home and enjoy Carnaval, but there was a woman still sitting by her produce. She had stacks of 4 grapefruits, called a chadèk in créole.  She nodded to me and I paused.  Elizabeth had told me once, never pay more than 5 gourdes for a grapefruit. One Haitian dollar.  I put up both index fingers. "One dollar? For one?"  She nodded and smiled.  I could not believe it!  My first grapefruit at a normal market price; what an accomplishment!  And now the power has JUST gone out and I want to try to post this before going to bed.

"Derirye mon gen mon," Beyond mountains are mountains.

   Mountains Beyond Mountains is the biography of Dr. Paul Farmer, who is a Harvard-trained epidemiologist famous all over the world for his work to combat diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS.  He and some friends co-founded Partners in Health, an organization that helps to train local workers as teachers, medical aides and social workers.  Because of their strong policy of collaboration with the people they serve, their hospitals are said to be among the best in Haiti.  The title of the book is from a Haitian saying, as in, 'There's always one more hill to climb.'  On Sunday afternoon I was a few miles north of Saint Marc and was able to take this picture of the mountains just north and south of the town.  In the foreground you see Jean Rony, one of my friends here and a teacher at Bons Samaritains.  Saint Marc is behind the first mountain you see, and before the blue one in back of it.  The Caribbean Sea is off to our right.

   The piece of land that I mentioned in an earlier post is directly to the right of Jean Rony.  I did not intend to ride a motorscooter here in Haiti, but Jean Rony was curious to see the piece of land and offered to take us there on his Honda.  Fortunately he is a careful driver and I did not fall off.  

  As we were driving north out of town he asked me if I would like to see the hospital, so I said sure.  We walked in and out of all the small buildings on the campus, right through emergency and all the inpatient wards, which were full.  

   Going to the hospital in Haiti is more of a family affair than it is in the U.S.  It is your family who brings you food and cares for your general needs, so you can imagine the wards are a lot more filled with people than they are in the hospitals back home.  Also, privacy is a lot less of an issue.  When I asked about labor and delivery, Jean Rony and I were led back a hallway, through a room where one woman was just about imminent, then through a doorway right into the next- which was accouchements, the delivery room itself!   The midwives were on duty at the foot of the bed, again, family members were there to hold hands, and two women were about to give birth.   I thanked them for the tour and left before the blessed events took place.  I told Jean Rony that was the first time I had ever seen that; the other three times I was in that room I was the woman on the table!

   Shortly after I arrived here in Saint Marc, I had heard  that Partners in Health was helping them to enlarge and improve their hospital.  I had forgotten all about that, but I could see there was a lot of construction going on around the hospital.  I'm sure they will be glad for the space and the improvements, it was a very busy place!

Li li li: "She's reading the book."

  This morning I sat down with some little ones who were reading their readers. A little first grade girl read to me from her reader.  So sweet to hear.  I can't wait till my grandson Ethan starts reading to me next year!  They were too young to actually have stories yet, so I asked if anyone had a story in his reader. A boy about 4th grade handed me his, and I opened it to a page where a boy wakes up grouchy because it's Monday. He has too much to do in school and he's mad the weekend is over and he decides he's sick. I said, "Does that happen to any of you?" and the 4th graders all nodded yes!
   These are pictures from videos I shot this morning.  I have the nicest videos that I've taken and I can't seem to upload them anywhere. It goes slowly and times out or I get the 'error' message. I can only send 10 MB in my email and that pretty much precludes anything longer than about 25 seconds. I am sure I will figure something out. This weekend I thought to try my college student account, and this is a possibility because it is definitely made for larger uploads, but Jeff, who is my advisor, said all he got this time was the sound. In March the Lear brothers are coming for their annual visit, and they are computer experts! If they can't figure it out, I am sure they will take my videos home in their computer and send them to you when they get a chance.

   Here you see a little kindergarten student.  You can tell she is a kindergarten girl, because she wears a plaid dress, instead of the blue jumper and shirt all the other girls wear.  Also, the kindergarteners have a 'mouchoir,' a hanky, pinned to their shirts.  Even the little boys. I noticed the first day of school they were all starched and pretty, and now some of them aren't.  I don't know if it's for identification purposes or to be handy (which doesn't seem like a bad idea for a little one.)

   Finally, one of the last scenes of the video:  In the morning, the students all come in and are supposed to get out their books and read while they wait for the bell to ring.  The inner courtyard is very pretty and shaded.  There is a huge palm tree in the center called a "Traveler's Palm."  I believe it has to do with a traveler being able to get a drink out of it.  Also, Agnes told me that since it has been planted it changed its growing orientation toward the sun.  So here is a miraculous shot of some of the kids surrounding the courtyard in the morning, about 7:30 at Les Bons Samaritains, Haiti.  I say 'miraculous' because by the time I shot this picture I had had the camera out for two or three minutes, and by that time the mob is usually so thick, and there are so many hands reaching up to say hi, that I can no longer take a picture!  

The Caribbean, Take 2.

   On Sunday after he took us to see the land where he hopes to build a high school, Father Alcide stopped at this spot on the Caribbean.  A woman named Roselande lives there with her family, and I asked if I could come again sometime and she said yes, so I'm going to try!

   You can see in the lower right, we are up on a seawall.  Sister Mary said that after the hurricanes (I don't know if it was this past year or previous ones) they built this seawall to protect the houses here.  So I checked it out, and I am pretty sure that I will be able to get down there and wet my toes in the Caribbean one of these days.  Sister, on the other hand, felt that her climbing days were over and she remarked, "We're miles from the beach, here!"

  In this picture of Sister Mary, you can see the port of Saint Marc in the background.  That is where Sister and I were last Sunday.  And now, back at the port, here is a picture of the huge patio behind the old hotel.  Can you see why I think Digicell needs to fix this up and open it to the townspeople?  Maybe since they don't use it they could lease it to a business person who could open it up as a café.  Couldn't you see yourself here, sipping a glass of tea?  And it is behind a building that faces the Place, the one-block park that is the center of town.  So it is centrally located and has all that going for it, too.

Sunday Morning February 15: Two Chapels, a Dream and the Sea

  Sunday has been an absolute smorgasbord of events here in Haiti.  But first of all, before any of them, today and last night are the Silent Auction for Haiti, our biggest annual fundraiser at St. Paul's in Annville, my home church.  So last evening, after they had put everything away for the night, they called me from Annville.   I got to talk -and wave-to Dr. Mortel and Father Peck and all the wonderful people who work hard all year in our parish to raise money and awareness for the people here in Haiti. It was great talking to you, and isn't Skype just wonderful?

   Last week Father Alcide at St. Marc's said that I could ride along with him this weekend to two of the chapels that Saint Marc's serves.  These are not very far as the miles go, but require a long time and a good four wheel drive vehicle to get there.

   The first mass was at La Louwère. I hope I have the spelling right. This is a beautiful chapel, in the foothills of the mountains, I would guess not more than six or seven miles from town.  It has trees around it and is in a pleasant setting.  The dirt road was washed out in many places, and we crossed a stream where the bridge had been destroyed in a storm some time earlier.  Several times we  were in mud up to our axles, but Father persevered up and down and sliding sideways until we got there.  On the higher parts, instead of the mud there are often clouds of dust.  Above you see two pictures of the front and the back of the chapel.  That's Father Alcide in the blue shirt on the back porch waving it's time to go.

   The second chapel was Barbe. Barbe is an open church, a pavillion, really, wood frame with a corrugated tin roof and woven palm fronds for walls.  The floor is dirt and during mass a few geckos ran up the center aisle.   The music in Haitian churches is always spiritual - lots of a capella singing and always some drums.  This service was especially beautiful because they had a group of eight girls dance.  It was a very moving service in many ways; I noticed, on all the open beams, all around the chapel, were verses and sayings:  Be not afraid, I come that you can have life, Welcome, Peace.  It was humbling to see so much devotion, hard work and faith all in one small place.

  After mass, Father took us to see a plot of ground he has received as a gift from a parishoner. He hopes to build a high school for St. Marc on this land. Here he points out the site.

  For family members, Father Alcide reminds me very much of Father Canal, an old family friend from Spain whom we all met through Aunt Clare.  He is very personable, dynamic, and can work a room. And he is also a scholar like Father Canal, having studied at the college in Rome.  Of the five languages he speaks, I think English might be his weakest, so I usually talk to him in French. He and Sister Mary have great conversations in Créole which include a lot of laughing; I think they talk about some of the humorous situations that exist here in Haiti.

  Today in the car, coming down off the mountain after the mass at Barbe, we went over a bridge and on the other side was seated an elderly white-haired man, dressed in a black suit.       They waved and exclaimed over seeing him there. I asked, "Is he someone who sits around the church?" Yes, he is.  It was probably one or two miles away from Saint Marc's. And the street leading into town, Pivert, is very busy with very few sidewalks.   After seeing him, Father showed us the high school land, and then he stopped at a parishoner's house and we got to walk out back and look at the Caribbean (Sister must have told him we were dying to see it again after our walk last Sunday.)   Then we went to the rectory and had dinner. After dinner, as Sister walked me out through the churchyard, there was the man, in his black suit, sitting in the shade on the church steps!  Out and back was sure a long way to walk for a person his age.

A Remarkable Woman

   On Sunday I had dinner at the rectory of St. Marc's Church with the priests who live there and Sister Mary Hardawin.  Sister Mary is an incredible Irish lady who has been in Haiti for 15 years.  She was already in her 60's when she came here for the first time.  She was telling funny stories at dinner about learning Créole, and how she would make public and embarrassing errors when she was first getting started.

   She and Father Alcide have just returned from Kentucky where they visited their sister parish of Saint James.  Father Alcide told us at dinner that he was asked to speak during mass and he didn't trust his English.  So he asked Sister Mary, if he would speak in Créole, would she translate into English for him.  She said she would.  He told us, instead of speaking in English, she repeated everything he said to the congregation- in Créole.

   She is tireless and gutsy.  She has two artificial hips and walks everywhere to visit the sick and people in prison.  I asked her if she ever takes the motorscooters that buzz everywhere like bees.  Occasionally, she told me.  Just the day before, she had walked very far and as she came back into town, decided she would take one.  They cost 10 Gourdes, about 25 cents.  So she said to the driver, if you go slow, I will pay you.  But if you go fast, I won't.  I have bad hips and must watch out!

   I have watched Haitian women perched sidesaddle on these things.  They sit there elegantly, maybe holding their purse in their lap, with that great posture, maybe even the ankles crossed, just as though they're sitting on a chair in somebody's living room.  Only, they're on the back of a motorscooter bouncing down a rutted street with maybe a dog or two chasing them.  It looks to me like it requires athletic ability if you're going to go in a dress.  I would not care to try it.  If I do, I'm going to be in my jeans and not sit sidesaddle.

   Sister said, everything was going well until they got to the last turn, he took it too fast, they went over a bump and she almost fell off.  She didn't say if he got the 10 gourdes or not.

   After dinner we took a walk, because I asked Sister if there were any good places in St. Marc to see the Caribbean.  So she walked with me, and when we walked behind one of the buildings lining the beach, we found a group of boys hanging out.  She spoke to them in Créole.  They each got a blank look on their face when she addressed them and answered, "I don't speak English."  Then she'd try again.  Apparently they just aren't used to hearing Créole with an Irish accent!  After a couple of tries they realized what she was saying and answered her.

   She wondered who owned the building now.  She said that it used to be the back porch of a nice hotel, and you could come there and sit and have tea, and look at the Caribbean.  It's still a nice setting, but all broken and messed up, like so many other things here, and completely littered with trash.  Digicell owns the building out front that faces the street.  If they own the back, too, they should make it nice so people could come sit there again.

Harsh Realities

I have mentioned how out front is a big bus stop, essentially.  'Tap taps' are pickup trucks- often Toyotas- with a narrow benches on either side for those lucky enough to board early enough to get a seat. After that, it's SRO as they fill in the middle and sometimes you will see people and things on the roof of the cab. The notion of a small pickup being a half ton truck is an absurdity.

So there is a continual coming and going in front of school.  Just moments ago, I heard a pig squealing and screaming.  Those of you who know me know I could very easily turn vegetarian, especially if I had to have anything to do with the killing end of the meat preparation.  I really thought this hog was being butchered right there by the charcoal sellers.  I went reluctantly over to the window and looked out and realized the guy was tying the hog up to take it home on the tap tap.  Either he bought it at the market, or he brought it to town and didn't get the price he was hoping for.  

So.  I am so glad he didn't butcher the hog before the gates of the school. AND I am also glad that I am not riding home in a tap tap with an unhappy pig screaming at my feet.  And since this particular pig has caught my interest, I will send up a wish that it's a she, going home to her new home in the mountains, to live a long and happy life as a mommy pig.

Dust, or, Why They Don't Just Slide Over in the Pew in Church

The first time I went to church I noticed that it is not the custom here to just move over when someone wants to sit in your pew.  If you want to sit in a pew that is already occupied, you might have to crawl over 6 or 7 people.  No one minds, but at the same time they do not move down.  This morning it finally dawned on me:  Everyone, man or woman, as they enter the pew, pulls out a hanky or cloth and wipes off the spot where they are about to sit.  You want to wipe off the kneeler, too.  And once you've gone to the trouble, you're loath to move and give up this nice clean seat.

Everything is always coated with a fine layer of dust, every day.  After just 3 or 4 days, the dust is thick.  As soon as mass is finished in church, the sacristan covers the altar with a plastic tablecloth that he does not remove until a few minutes before the next mass.

Meritesse and Wilson

 

  Here is a picture of Meritesse and Wilson, the caretakers at the school.  They rely on these two, especially on Meritesse, for pretty much everything.  If I ask him for something and he doesn't know what I mean, he runs up the street and gets Dr. Mortel's sister, Dinah, to come over.                

   Meritesse only speaks Creole, but if I speak French slowly we can usually get along pretty well.  For example, when I asked him to get the ladder to help me put up the mosquito net, he went over to the closet and got it right out, no problem.

   There are big iron gates in front of the school, and one of the guys is usually always there on duty, or else they have it locked.  One of the first nights, when Jeff was still here, we met so many nice people at Foun's around the corner, and talked and talked.  We forgot to say we would be late.  We had to bang and bang on the gate to wake Wilson up and let us in.  So now I try to tell them what time I am coming back if I go out at night.   

   On Friday morning I went to the market and I bought two carnival masks.  "How much were they?" Elizabeth, the secretary, wanted to know.  They were 250 Gourdes each.  Her eyebrows went up and she shook her head.  "Maybe for both of them, but not for one!  You must get Meritesse to go buy things for you."  I had a fruit in the bag, too, something like a grapefruit.  They call it 'chaday' or something like that.  I had to admit that I gave 10 gourdes for the chaday.  Elizabeth looked at me and I could see the disappointment on her face.  "You should never pay more than 5 gourdes for one." (Which equals what they call 1 Haitian dollar.)

   A little bit later Meritesse brought me a glass of juice that Sister Marie Bernard, the principal, had sent up for me.  It was yellow, and I asked him if it was juice from the chaday.  "Yes," he said, and could not resist raising a finger and adding, "One dollar!"-- so I knew that Elizabeth had been filling him in about my shopping excursion.

   

Saturday Market

The market directly in front of the school is open every single day, but it's busier on the weekend. The people can buy everything here, all their food, and household goods and even little furniture, clothes, shoes, everything. Even charcoal stoves and charcoal to cook with. Across the street from the school, behind where the charcoal sellers sit, is the mechanics' shop. I believe they store their tools in the house behind them, and they work on the cars and the tap taps and motorcycles right there in the street.

I went out on Saturday to buy a few vegetables. They are often arranged in little pyramids, little piles, on the ground. I tried to buy only three tomatoes out of a pile, and was not getting anywhere with that. I think if I had known some creole I might have been able to speak a little more. Eventually I did get a lady to let me buy two little eggplants, instead of five, but I did wind up buying more tomatoes than I wanted. Plus, I am sure I paid too much; Jeff said the ladies were winking and smiling at each other. As we walked away, he said that tomorrow there might be a crowd of women waiting at the gates to sell me tomatoes. I may ask a student to do my shopping from now on.
A note about the ladies, carrying everything on their heads. Just this morning I passed a 

woman on the street carrying a basket of green beans on her head. It was loaded up so heavy, the beans were piled high and hanging over the sides; it was probably two feet tall and two fe

et wide. And she was walking so elegantly and smoothly not one bean fell off. No hands. I just read a post by an American woman who is a mother of a one year old. They live near St. Marc and build clean water systems in the mountain areas. She said her daughter is beginning to walk- and she is trying to carry things on her head. How cute is that? Her mom wrote that she never does it; her daughter must be watching the women she sees around town. The men all use wheelbarrows to carry their stuff. You never see a man balancing anything on his head.

Ma Moustiquaire

Here is my moustiquaire, or, as they say in Créole, mustiké.  Créole is totally phonetic, like Spanish, and sounds a little choppier to me than French.  On Saturday night there was a storm, into Sunday morning, and this awakened lots of mosquitoes. In addition, I would leave my bedroom door open.  As there are doors left open downstairs during the day, a lot of flying bugs can come in. At any rate, Saturday and Sunday night were big mosquito nights.  Think Canada on our summer fishing vacation. So Monday I went out looking for a mosquito net. They were right on the shelf in the grocery store. This is actually a really big one, for a whole family to sleep under, I guess. I think I could put the other twin bed in my room under it as well.  

Meritesse, who is one of the caretakers here at the school, and practically lives here, installed it for me.  Just as he was bringing the ladder up the stairs (I'm on the third floor) Dinah and her cousin Nancy came up to say hi. So you can picture poor Meritesse high on a ladder, and three women directing him, a little to the left, make the string looser, not near the fan. He was cheerful through it all, however, and the result got pretty nice, don't you think? 

The Kindergarten

In my first kindergarten class this morning, the teacher was saying prayers with the kids as I entered. They had their heads down on the desk and they were reciting and answering. At the end she said something like, thanks be to God who is so good to us. And they said some response like, yes, thanks be to God. And the little charismatics in the class raised their hands up and waved them. There are a lot of evangelical churches here in Haiti. I noticed people in the Catholic church, too, raising their hands in prayer during mass.
It really gave me pause to hear and see that. Our students might not feel as though God had smiled on them. In the kindergarten there are 49 children in one classroom no bigger than 25 feet square. They fit three or four to a bench that two sit at in the upper grades. They get breakfast and lunch here, and an education to be envied, even among kids who do get to go to school. And especially envied by those kids I see walking around in the street during the day who do not get to go.
Today I taught the colors. I only had 15 minutes, so I made flash cards of the crayola 8 plus grey, pink, and white. We sang, to the tune of London Bridges Falling Down,
I know all my colors,
Red, purple, orange, brown.
White, grey, black, blue,
Green, pink, yellow.
They were able to sing along by the end of the 15 minute class; we will see if any sticks till next week. I need to go out into the schoolyard during recess, maybe some of us can sing it there. It is daunting for me to go out during recess; the kindergarten and first grade (96 students and 87 students respectively) are in the inner courtyard during recess so they don’t get mowed down by the older ones. They do not get out the jumpropes and balls and things like we did this summer during the camp I attended. I think there might be a theory that it is not good to get them too wound up if you are going to expect them to be orderly 10 minutes later. So they pretty much stand around. When I come out they surround me. Truly mob me, I mean like 10 or 20 all very close. I remember Jeff saying, tiny and well-meaning as they are, they can pretty well knock you over if you lose your balance. They are very fascinated by my skin, and will touch my arms.
Yesterday I went out and suggested to a teacher that we play the circle game, “Here we Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush.” Without even knowing what I wanted, she very kindly offered to help me. I was thinking we could mime the ‘brush teeth’ and ‘comb hair.’ I thought maybe 10 or 20 could participate, but of course all 90 were interested. If you have ever tried to get ninety 5-year-olds to form a circle in another language (I don’t think their French is very good yet at this stage; they are mostly thinking in Créole) then you can imagine the mess. I am sure it looked exactly the same to an onlooker as when they simply mobbed me and we stood and smiled at each other.

New Life Village

This is a little group of houses that you pass out in the country just before you come into St. Marc. Someone told me that about five years ago, during the flooding season, the river here in St. Marc backed up and made a deadly flood that killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of homes. Nothing like what happened in Gonaives last summer and fall, but terrible nonetheless.
Food for the Poor collaborated with Broetje Orchards (I have no idea if that company operates here or just overseas. There are a lot of European Union countries that run projects here.) and they built this little development of houses. I know a couple who gave money to build one of them, and I wanted them to see it.
It looks like a nice place.

Too Much Food

     It is a sin to say it, here in Haiti, but I have way too much food.  First of all, Dinah, Dr. Mortel's sister, is a fabulous cook.  So she sends food.  On Sunday, when Jeff was leaving, she made a special soup and sent it for breakfast.  We were at church a long time (services are usually at least two hours long; Dr. Mortel says a Haitian feels cheated if he gets any less) and the ride to the airport came before he could eat very much. So I have some very good soup in the fridge, in addition to some of the other meals she made for us in the past 5 days.  Pasta and rice and meat with sauces, especially bean sauce, all a little spicy with clove and other things- but not too spicy. It's very good.

Then there are the lunch ladies. They come Monday to Friday and make huge vats of soup or rice and beans, or maize, like yesterday.  Really good, stew-type things I happen to like.  So I give them a saucepan and say, "un petit peu, s'il vous plait," and they send that up, full.  So now I have around ten containers full of meals in my refrigerator.

Meritesse, the caretaker here, just came up and asked me for a plate so he could bring me some lunch.  I showed him my collection in the fridge and told him to tell them thanks, but not for a couple of days at least.

Jeff said, "Every time I come to Haiti I think I am going to lose weight, but I never do."  I can easily see why.

Mornings at les Bons Samaritains

Every morning the students line up by grade and slowly raise the flag as they sing the national anthem. After that they say prayers and then walk into school. It's solemn and serious. The school has gotten so big now that they don't all fit in the courtyard; the little ones in kindergarten and first grade are in the courtyard behind me.
They all wear uniforms; the boys have blue plaid shirts and navy pants, and the girls wear blue plaid blouses and navy jumpers and blue hair ribbons. The kindergarten girls wear a plaid dress- and a starched handkerchief is often pinned to the front.
The Mortel Foundation has just bought some adjacent properties and they are going to increase the size of this courtyard so the kids will have more space for activities.