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.
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