The Time Has Come

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Remember that the Christian life is one of actions; not of speech and daydreams.
-St. Vincent Pallotti

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Hello all! It's been another busy week here at LCS. We have a new work project. Since there are too many students to do an hour of work in the school all at the same time, we have started taking kids outside to pick up trash along Route National 3 right outside. At first, I was dreading going outside with 100 students to work along a busy road, but It's really not as dangerous or monotonous as it sounds. We assigned the project two older classes, twasiem and segund, but it hasn't taken long for the other students to request to come outside with us. These students are either dedicated to making Haiti a better place, or they really want to get of the school.

Everybody has been assigned a pair of gloves, and we bought new shovels, rakes, machetes, and wheelbarrows. In short, there is some serious cleaning going on. Since there is no real trash system in Haiti (it all gets dumped in the river or Citisole,) we put all of the trash in piles and burn it then bury it. It sounds primitive because it is, but it's the best option we have. The most fun comes out of the project when you see a student with an attitude suddenly get into what they're doing, or when people stop to ask who you are and thank you for what you're doing. Some people are really touched by what we're doing. On the second day out, we had neighborhood men voluntarily join us, cutting brush and shoveling piles of trash. Every once in a while, there is a car with a microphone and four by seven speakers that will drive by playing music and cheering us on (or cracking white people jokes if the see one of the volunteers.) We get car honks of support or disdain, cheers, rants, and people who come and stare. During one trip out on the weekend, we ran into a pastor who also runs a school and wants to get his students to join up with us. Even our neighborhood kids have gotten in on the action. Christina takes a group of about 15 to 20 Santo 5 people out every day. In a country where there are very few systems and nothing seems organized, I am dumbfounded to see the work that we are doing here.

We are also setting up groups of students who will volunteer at the Missionaries of Charity, which I am really excited about. Other projects include general maintenance of school grounds, moving offices so that we can have a teacher work room, and fixing up our back entrance to be our new main entrance (and it looks beautiful!)
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School is going well. We have our first quarter exams coming up. I don't know if it's normal or not, but our first quarter is only seven weeks long. That seems pretty short to me, but maybe it's just because I wish I had more time.

I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not, but our students are multilingual. They speak French, Creole, English and Spanish. In all reality, teaching them these languages (especially when you don't speak their native language) is an impossible task; however, we have instituted a language initiative called the language of the day where students have the opportunity to earn coins for having a conversation in the language of the day. Upstairs we have a box full of goodies (toys, jump ropes, calculators) that students can "purchase" at the end of the week. Walking from one side of campus to the other is now impossible to do without hearing "Miss, you give me ticket?" It's getting to be a bit much, but at the same time, the kids get so much good practice speaking English.
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Our library is now open to the public. Every Wednesday and Friday, the library staff hosts a read aloud for any neighbor ti moun yo (children) who want to come in. Even though the program is still getting organized, the children love coming in. Last Friday, we could not work with the kids because of a meeting. We were all disappointed, but resigned because of exhaustion. It had been a long week of preparing kids for exams and hard physical labor outside. However, when I got out of the meeting and walked back towards my room, I heard someone call my name. Running towards me with her arms out was Cassandra, a little girl whose parent's hadn't taken care of her. When I first met Cassandra, she was quiet and dirty. She had huge scabs around her joints, under her neck, behind her ears, and on her scalp because her parent's would not bathe her. She stood a full head shorter than her twin sister who was always bathed and looked happy. Christina took her to the clinic down the road for her scabs, and at the same time the lunch program was starting to catch on. We had enough food for everyone to get their own plate. We also started bathing the children after they played. Whenever the kids came in, I always looked for Cassandra. If she's not there, we send someone out to get her. One day after the lunch program started taking off, Cassandra came in in a beautiful dress with her hair pulled back nicely. She was smiling from ear to ear, and she looked beautiful. She has completely changed from the first time I met her. She is outgoing and happy. So, when I leave the meeting, who do I see except Cassandra, running towards me with her hands out wide. It wasn't long before there were three other kids hanging on me. I looked around and saw that I wasn't the only one who had been attacked. All around campus there were little groups of five to seven children climbing all over a volunteer in the middle. It was beautiful, and we got to play with the children after all.
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I know that I've said it many times before, but this school is a very special place. Things happen here, miracles. Forgotten children smile, students build futures, streets become clean and green...I know that I haven't even discovered many people this school influences, and that makes me love this place all the more. Somehow, in the madness of a third world country, LCS has survived and helped countless people. It is also a fact that there is no one person or one group of people who keep this project going. Everybody depends on each other, and even if you consider yourself separate from this project, you are not. I really appreciate all of the support that everybody has been giving me while I have been here, and if anything that I have written about has touched you in any way, please consider donating to LCS/THP.

Our school is run on donations, and this year we have not gotten as many donations as we would like. Donations can be made online at THP's website. Please help us keep the good work going!

Kids, paint, and broken internet

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If you never did, you should. Things are fun, and fun is good.
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My apologies for not updating the blog in a while, but lately we have had an excess of paint and kids, but no internet, which isn't so surprising for a third world country if you think about it. So, as the internet may go down any minute, here is a quick update:

Classes are fun and busy. It turns out that there was an extra two periods Tuesday mornings where one of my Sisiem sections were supposed to have English with another professor who was fired. SO, my students had a double block that I was expected to teach but nobody told me about. It turned out to be great, because I turned this into an art/vocab class.

After some troubles with translators, I finally have everything settled. I'm still trying to get the hang of teaching students who have no idea what I'm saying and who I can't talk to on my own because I don't speak their language. The situation is really ridiculous and never fails to crack me up.

It turns out that my sankiem class, that had my challenging students, has turned into my most fun class. After a talk about respect, my social class turned a 180 and began reprimanding students who didn't follow the rules without me saying anything. Now, we joke and have fun in class, and I can tell that there is a lot of learning going on. All in all, it's a wonderful set up.

I promise to update again soon, but for now, I have to go. Have a good week!