Following my time in
Port-au-Prince, Jeanide and I traveled up to the tiny Village of Bois
D’Avril. We met John and Deb in
Petionville and took a quick detour to the grocery store. There I was able to pick up a phone charger
for myself, and a piece of cheesecake to split with Jeanide. It was her first time encourntering the rich
creamy delicacy, but she enjoyed every bite.
6,000 feet above sea level is where Deb and John call home. They are a lovely Baha’i couple who are
originally from Canada. They moved to
Haiti 33 years ago and moved up into the mountains just before the
earthquake. Their house sits just above
the village and offers a brilliant look out into the mountains southward. This is what the sunrise looks like just
outside the bedroom door where I slept.
Upon waking up I got right to
teaching. Friday, the first day, I let the kids explore on the laptops to see
what they knew. It was evident they had
used the laptops before, but I knew there was plenty of potential for
progress. The kids messed around on the
piano activity, took pictures, and played games. After finishing class we pulled out the
soccer ball and played a game in the open field. I held my own but was struggling to catch my
breath by the end. I called it quits and
got to experience a warm shower thanks to the home’s solar heated shower.
The weekend came and I spent
majority of my time working on papers for my Independent Studies at
Oakland. I have successfully wrote my 20
page paper on the effectiveness of earthquake relief in Haiti, and have begun
writing the three others. Two papers are for Global Political Philosophy, in
which I will explore the reliance on aid, and the idea of Cosmopolitanism. The
last is for Modern Language, and it will be a reflection on my trip, with a
focus on my exposure to a new culture and language. I will post them here when the editing phase
is complete.
In between my periods of creative
brilliance, I took a few breaks to go on some adventures. Saturday Jeanide and I headed to a place called
Mon Sel, or Salt Mountain. There is a
reservation there called L’Haiti de Demain, or the Haiti of tomorrow. The reservation was a 3 or 4 mile walk
through some winding paths, and sat just off a dirt road. The park consists of 2 tennis courts, a playground,
a soccer field, a restaurant, and countless gardens. It seemed oddly placed and no one seemed to
be home when we arrived. We walked around to the side entrance and the gate was
open. Jeanide and I walked quietly,
hesitant to draw attention, but eventually we were met by staff. The explained they were not open, but Jeanide
convinced them to let us at least look around for 10 minutes. We walked around the premise and saw as much
as we could. Things moved a little
slower than I had hoped with Jeanide stopping to have me take pictures for her
Facebook page, but it was a lovely slice of Haiti. We stopped and had the groundskeeper take a photo. He had never used a camera before, but was able to capture my radiant good looks quite well. We took a motorcycle back, and arrived just
in time for dinner.
Sunday I wrote some more, but took
a break to go to a picnic with Jeanide and John. There I met a bunch of people working with
their own governmental and non-governmental organizations. A lot of them had been in Haiti for a long
time and had some cool stories to tell.
I enjoyed some carrot cake, chased some kids through a field, and
socialized with the adults. The walks
back and forth were absolutely breathtaking.
You start off in a forest of pine trees that opens up to an open field
of farms and cliff faces. You trek along
the narrow goat path up and down left and right before arriving to the property
that sits on the edge of a drop off. I
plan to take Paul to Bois D’Avril next week Wednesday.
Throughout the week I taught, on
average, 3 classes a week. The ages
ranged from kindergarten to 5th grade. With the Kindergarteners it was hard to be
productive. It is nice to get the kids excited about technology, and it is good
for them to get an understanding of how to use it, but there isn’t room for
much else. The 5th graders is
a different story. The have access to
the Internet-in-a-box (iiab) hardware, so they have the ability to read
Wikipedia, access khan academy, and download other education software. I spent the week getting them equated with
its ins and outs.
We finished off the week with a
class for the teachers on how to use iiab.
The information on there is mostly in French or English, so having the
teachers well versed is essential. They
are the ones who benefit the most. They
can walk the kids through the articles translating what it says, or they can
learn something new for themselves and teach a lesson on it later. The teachers took well to it and made some
great progress. They are now in Sora’s capable hands, and I’m sure she can help
them progress further.
I am now back in Port-au-Prince at
Haiti Communitere. Paul comes tomorrow and we will spend my last week in Haiti
together. I’ll take him around to a few
of my favorite places. We will start in
PAP and visit 3 or 4 of the schools here, then we will spend 2 days in Grand
Goave at Mission of Hope. From there we
will head into the mountains to Bois D’Avril for 2 days, and then it’s back to
PAP so that we can catch out flights out on the 20th. I really should be working on editing and
citations so I’m going to cut this blog post short. I should have plenty more to say, and I will
be sure to post my papers on here when I am finished.
Hang on,
Sean
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