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.