Struggling Through

In the directors office of the secondary school sit three good-looking men wearing white pressed shirts and ties – “all tied up,” Andy says. The second class of the day ends at 9am and they take a break before stirring to supervise kids at the beginning of the next class. They are each good-looking, in their own way – one has angled features and a muscular frame, one has creamy skin and large, long-lashed eyes, one has a healthy physique, freckles and bright hazel eyes. Happily, one sacrifices a chair. From this perspective, teaching does not seem too daunting.

Then the 9am bell rings. Andy and I walk into a rowdy class of kids. The lesson plan: I introduce myself and then the kids take turns telling their names, where they are from and what they did for Christmas. This took an hour. Between one boy making kissy faces at me, another listening to music, another refusing to speak anything but Kreyol and others shouting across the classroom, not too much was accomplished. Andy and I talked with the good-looking guys in the office. They’re going to take turns bodyguarding me during class once Andy leaves. The kids listen to Haitian professors.

When I got back to the quad, I decided to clean my room and do some laundry. Such simple things… But now I have a newfound and profound respect for washerwomen. First, I add two little handfuls of detergent to a big bucket, then some water. After frothing it up with my hands, I add the first “load” of dirty laundry. The laundry must be soaked, scrubbed by hand and wrung. The dirty water goes down the drain and then come two rinses, the last one with “Mistolin,” which makes things smell like they might be clean and apparently kills little germies. All the clothes and sheets are hung on the railings of the quad – “like an Italian ghetto,” Fr. Marc says.

I had a hard time picking up my fork at lunch; my hands were cramped so badly.
The artisans occupy most of my worry time. One disrespects me, the other is nice but refuses to listen to what I say and the other two just smile or don’t and ignore me. We’re going to buy some of their work to decorate the quad. That way they can have an easier time selling (or, for us, reselling) to visitors when they come out to Castel Pere. Then, they’ll only have to lug the jewelry over – so it makes a lot of sense… one would think. There’s also the concern of keeping them to a microloan system, which essentially requires trying to change ingrained cultural qualities, a fete as easy as moving mountains.