learning to love

Oreo is the chubby black and white one on the left and Bingo is the skinny spotted boy on the right. Haitian puppies. They are five weeks old (about) and not yet weened. They sleep under a garbage container with their four brothers and sisters and visit our quad daily. They've begun eating very mild "Laughing Cow" cheese from my hands; today was the first day they settled down enough to fall asleep with me. They are plagued with fleas.

Why, you might ask, would one waste their time with raising and training puppies in Haiti? Well, when you see kids (being kids) kicking, throwing rocks at and generally harassing things more helpless than they, you sort of want to change the status quo -- at least by example. So these will be the quad puppies -- kids will (hopefully) learn kindness toward weak creatures and eventually they'll be good guard dogs as well.

Children here tumble up -- if it's a tough life here for them, unimaginably so. Many of the kids at Espwa must learn affection in addition to all their other tough school and life lessons.

Teaching Questions and Learning Life

(POST FROM JANUARY 11, 2007 -- INTERNET DIDN'T WORK YESTERDAY)

Today, the students learned (I hope) question words and phrases: who, what, when, why, where, how.

Today, I learned that teaching kids to question can be very, very dangerous (as in Pandora’s Box).

To eliminate the noise factor, one of the Haitian teachers stood “on guard” at the window of the classroom. The kids sat in relative quiet for the duration of the class. The challenge, then, became coming up with plausible and understandable practice examples. I had a sketchy lesson plan but of course wanted the kids to come up with their own examples too. There’s the rub!
After going over the meaning of each question word (French ESSENTIAL here), I laid out some basic examples of each. I wrote out and asked several questions and then had the kids to try making some questions up themselves. For each question I posed, there came a smattering of responses from the logical to the illogical, from the poorly structured phrase to the relatively eloquent but poorly pronounced phrase. Finally, they practiced a little themselves.

Here is basically how it went and followed by the resulting profound realizations:

“When do you have class?” – my question
“At 8 o’clock.” – good response

“When do you leave Haiti?” – their question
“I leave Haiti in 6 months.” – my response
Sociological analysis: kids here often want to know when people are leaving because they are accustomed to abandonment.
Lesson learned: Mean what you say.

“Why are you sad?” – my (stupid) question
“Because my mother is dead.” – response 1
“Because I have no money.” – response 2
Sociological analysis: The teacher, not yet in a “Haitian” frame of mind, asked a profound question only to find the kids surprisingly honest in their responses to a heartbreaking degree.
Lesson learned: The American manner of obfuscating conversational responses for the purpose of social appeasement does is not in style here in Haiti.

“Why do you love Haiti?” – student question
“Why do you love the boy?” – student question
“Why do you love the Haitian boy? – student question
Sociological analysis: Why is a dangerous line of questioning in any language and adolescent boys only think about one thing. As for the first question, “why do you love Haiti?” well, that’s a common question Haitians ask of visitors. One can only begin to understand why.
Lesson learned: Uhhh, change the subject.

“How are you doing?” – my question
“I am fine.” – student response
“How do you _____?” – my unfinished question, which I quickly filled in…
“How do you dance kompa?” – my brilliant epiphany
a boy near the front stands up and begins dancing, to show me, then asks me if I’ll dance with him.
Sociological analysis: How is a dangerous line of questioning in any language and adolescent boys only think about one thing.
Lesson learned: Uhhh, change the subject.

Overall lesson learned: I am so painfully under-qualified to do this.

Teaching a class of Haitian eighth-graders becomes a greater learning experience for the teacher than the students. While I struggle to find new and better ways to make my instruction clearer, my mind works in overdrive to simultaneously take in the little lessons my students will teach me. If only I, like my spanking brand new MacBook Pro, had a dual core processor. Instead, I will have to make time for reflection some time this week… Maybe after the shrimp feast tonight.

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.