Things You can do in Haiti

These past few weeks I have learned a few "more interesting" things that you can do in Haiti...

-Dig a trench across a public road to pipe water to a house across the street.
-Burn large quantities of trash on opposing sides of a main road to the Dominican Republic.
-Dig multiple large holes (Think about the fact that I needed help climbing out of each one) alongside this roads to bury the metal, glass, and remaining ash.
-Paint a sign on the nearby wall that says in Kreyol: "Attention! Do not litter here."



As you might guess, the last few weeks have been pretty interesting. We started a pretty major project: trying to clean up the mountains of trash in our area. Like many developing countries, Haiti has a very weak sanitation system. Basically, there is no formal way to dispose your trash. Burning trash, with the exception of metal and glass, is the most "environmentally" safe method here in Haiti. Anyway, are currently sending over 100 students each day during clean up time to pick up trash, make piles, burn the piles (with gasoline or kerosene), rake trash out of the ditches, dig holes, and bury non-burnable trash (metal/glass). We have even begun trucking plastic bottles back to campus for our recycling program.

We had a major push the first week of the project as the U.S. volunteers and Haitian staff members took smaller student groups outside throughout the day to pick up trash. Similarly, the project hired someone to literally dig holes all day next to our burn piles. Speaking of burn piles, these can contain almost anything you can imagine. Rotting food, general trash, tires, clothes, shoes, dirt, leaves, cans, diapers, and dead animals are only some of the treasures you might find. One of the piles even included 2 dead dogs and a dead cat. As you might imagine, the "hot dog" and barbecue jokes that began that day have never stopped...

Life has continued since that first, hectic week. As I mentioned before, we have started a recycling program for plastic bottles and aluminum cans. We have a pretty impressive collection of plastic, which I am very excited to see leave our campus. Also, we've expanded our zone of "clean" to more than six blocks on the main road, our entire surrounding neighborhood, and we are pushing towards another main road. Pretty exciting stuff. And just so people don't get too practical (or cynical on us) we ARE trying to make these changes more systemic by talking to local government, businesses, and citizens. Still not sure how this will all work out, but the effort is being made.

In other news, the other week I had some pretty great discussions with my students about national identity and what it means to be a Haitian. I found two questions to be pretty provocative for my students: (1)Are Haitians who leave Haiti with the intention of never returning still Haitian? (2) Could Mr. Moynihan (the president of the Haitian Project) ever be considered Haitian?

Their responses were pretty interesting and the best thing was that they did not agree with each other. I love watching my students disagree.

The other day I had one of those moments when I am forced to remember that this is not a usual school. Certain moments on certain days scream this. One of my favorites was cleaning up dinner with the principal of the school and watching him mop the floor to finish the job. Similarly, this past week our students were not doing a good job cleaning the cafeteria. So instead of class one day, I took my class and we cleaned both cafeterias, sweeping, mopping, and wiping down all the tables. We even returned and had class for the final 5 minutes! Craziness...

Looking to the future: final exams are next week! Yes, that was an exclamation point. I never realized how much fun tests are to give to others... Plus exam week here does not include normal classes, as everything stops and the students take a 2 hour exam for each subject. So, a week off from class planning! And a four day weekend!

A sad day for the Irish...I'm not getting many break this year for college football. A sad day.

ps. I'm not in either picture. Sorry! I wasn't there the day the camera was present...

A new type of Juggling

It’s been a little while since I’ve written a blog post. As you might be able to guess, life has been busy here at Louverture Cleary.

I’ve started books in each of my classes and juggling four books simultaneously is actually pretty intellectually stimulating. I never before realized or appreciated the important role of a teacher in explaining key passages and the larger themes of a work of literature. It’s fascinating. Oh, I’m actually juggling a fifth, Lord of the Flies, as I am tutoring one of the President’s kids in English. In addition, I might start tutoring the oldest in American History and/or American Literature. I know it’s more work, but I actually really enjoy those subjects...

Oh, and here is a picture of me teaching in my classroom called “Terrains 1.”



So, I continue to spend money. A week ago, I splurged for a Coke and a bonn bonn (23 gourdes), which is a little more than 50 cents. I used these for refreshments during our tet anba session on a quiet Saturday afternoon. "Tet anba" is Kreyol for turning something on its head, turning it upside-down. Anyway, it’s the fun name we volunteers came up with for our idea of having intellectual discussions every few weeks. The idea was to have people present all sorts of topics and then have discussions and question and answer sessions afterward. I volunteered to lead the first and we discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for over two hours. Not everyone stayed until the end, but it was a pretty enjoyable experience. I prepared an outlined version of the history and then we just talked, asked questions, and talked some more. A very enjoyable experience in my opinion.

As you can imagine, teaching consists of moments of great joy and moments of great frustration. Joyful moments include some pretty excellent class discussions on Power and Justice. It really is wonderful to see the gears turning in the minds of my students. I take great joy when I can teach them something that they don’t even know in French. For example, half of my Rheto class was not familiar with the term “capitalism.” Even when I had someone translate it to French, they still were clueless. Craziness. I don’t know what they teach in their social sciences classes, but it seems to be lacking something. Anyway, we had a fun class trying to explain this and other economic concepts that are essential for understanding Animal Farm.

Oh, and I am now in charge of recycling here on campus. We are trying to recycle plastic bottles, scrap metals, and aluminum. This, as well as having students collect trash outside the school, are only tiny ways in which the school tries to fulfill its mission to be stewards of the environment. There will be more on this in the weeks to come.

Last Saturday, we went to a very nice hotel for some drinks. College football and Harry Potter were playing on dueling flat-screen TVs at the bar. It apparently was the same hotel that President Clinton stayed at when he was here for the Economic/Investor convention just a few days earlier. I’m still trying to figure out a way to get the President here at LCS. I think one of my next writing assignments will be to write a letter to President Clinton explaining why he should come to LCS. Maybe this will help…

Right, so last week one of the volunteers briefly left our humble home to return to the U.S. for her brother’s wedding. When she returned, she returned bearing gifts. Chocolate never tasted so good…

Finally, the range of English skills in my classes is both challenging and frustrating. On quizzes I gave last week, one class had three kids who received perfect scores (20/20) while in the same class one kid got a 7/20 and another a 9/20. Sigh. I guess this is why I’m available for tutoring 3 times a week…

I'm going to continue the trend of sharing my student's writing. My last assignment was to write a persuasive speech from the perspective of Toussaint Louverture in 1790. Toussaint Louverture was one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution. Here is the speech by one of my best Philo students.

“Liberty or Death”

"Dear fellow brothers of suffering. There was a time when the world was without vices. At this time, men were living together in equality. As human beings, they were living freely in mutual respect. As they were evolving, they became selfish. Everyone went in search of personal interest.

Since this time, men have become destroyers of men. The strong are oppressing the weak. Some pretend that they are superior to others. This is the excuse in which they have put us under the humiliating yoke of slavery. We are treated as beasts. This is unfair, we are not beasts! We are human beings! What differentiates humans from animals is their ability to think. Don’t we have brains like them? Can’t we think as they do?

As human beings, we have rights. And we must fight for those rights. Don’t we have the right to live in freedom? Don’t we have the right to express our thoughts? Now, they take our freedom. Don’t we have the right to fight for it?
It has already been one century that we have been submissive to the oppression of this ferocious exploitation. We are working to make the oppressor rich. As a reward, we receive the whip. They don’t feed us, the only thing that interests them is the result of our works.

We cannot stay in such a situation! This is why we must fight! Because we want to live. This is the time to stand up! Dear comrades! Haven’t you had enough? Aren’t you tired of being slaves? Aren’t you tired of being oppressed and ill-treated? Let’s join together to make a call for freedom. Tonight, we will fight! Tonight, I will be either a free man or a dead man. We will kill! We will kill! And we will live! Liberty or death!"
(Myriam)

I think I'm going to teach Gandhi and Martin Luther King's concepts of Non-Violent Direct Action very soon...

Peace

ps. Here is a student, nonchalantly carrying a machete to cut the grass on the soccer field.