Bois D'Avril

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 5^th 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 5^th 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 20^th.  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         

    

Port-au-Prince: Round 3

I’ve spent my time since the last post back in Port-au-Prince.  Once again I’m staying with the fine people here at Haiti Communitere.  I spent the first week working at Cazeau with Dyna and Johnny Laine.  Dyna is a teacher at the school who runs an after school XO program on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  In our 2 lessons together, Dyna and I taught typing, and showed the kids how to do research using Internet-in-a-box (iiab). iiab is a terabyte hard drive containing all of Wikipedia in multiple languages, and other educational software.  We explained to the kids how to use the search feature and asked a few basic questions for them to look up.  The young group quickly grasped the concept so we let them explore for the rest of class.  One little girl stumbled upon the page for feminism. I thought it a great photo op, but she had more important matters to attend to. It’s amazing to see what sparks the kids’ curiosity.  Giving them the ability to explore and learn is a wonderful feeling.

Between my two days with Dyna, I helped Johnny Laine teach an English class to the kids in the orphanage.  Johnny is a Haitian who works for Ken Bever at Hope for Haiti’s Children. He teaches English to the kids twice a week.  We started off the class by walking through and learning words and their pronunciation. Next I read the class a story, and sentence by sentence they repeated after me. Although this was cute, I wasn’t really impressed until the next step. I read the story in English again, but this time Johnny had the kids translate it into Creole.  The class translated in unison and did so perfectly.  We read another story and then I asked each of them individual questions.  The English class was especially easy to teach and was a nice break from my regular lesson plans.  Below are a few students from the class. 

That Thursday was also Thanksgiving.  The holiday is not celebrated in Haiti for obvious reasons, but I was staying with a bunch of Americans, so we had our own party.  The day before, people went out and bought some live turkeys and let them roam the compound.  Then Thursday people were here all day cooking.  There was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes pie for dessert.  We all pitched in $10 and that paid for some live entertainment too.  A talented musician from the city brought his guitar and played a few songs for us while we ate. It wasn’t the same, but it was a nice taste of home.

That weekend I helped out around Communitere doing chores.  Michael is a middle aged volunteer from the UK. He had been cleaning the storage closet out all week, and recruited me to help him sort through some old electronics.  We went through 3 or 4 boxes of gadgets left behind, and found some really cool stuff.  The first thing that caught my eye was a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).  We kept digging and found 3 laptops, dozens of walkie talkies, and more than enough wires.  I hooked up the NES as soon as I had time and tried to get it working. The conventional techniques weren’t working (blowing the dust out of the cartridge), so I ended up disassembling it to better diagnose the issue.  The 72 bit connector that the game plugs into was bent out of shape. I bended it back into place, and after a few tries we got it working.  The next day I checked through the computers and was able to salvage a laptop.  I offered to pay the people at Communitere for it, but they were just happy to clear up some space.  I dropped the laptop off at Cazeau, and it will be sent to one of our teachers at a later date.

I’ve spent this week bouncing around between Cazeau, Croix-des-bouquets, and Silar’s orphanage.  At Silar’s I had to document all the information of the electrical appliances he uses.  The plan is to later convert his electricity from 110 volts to 24 volts.  At Cazeau I did some more work on the internet, including installing a new Ethernet cable. The idea is to permanently install an access point in the principal’s office so that the kids can connect whenever.  I spent my time in Croix-des-bouquets with Jeanide and Junior.  They are two Haitians who I have worked with in the past.  They have recently started their own English school and are teaching once a week.  I went around with them and talked to some potential students about joining.  We went and visited one school down the road from where they hold class, and we talked to a few classes before and after recess.  During recess the older kids played soccer in the yard.  I joined in and showcased by very limited skill.  The Haitian sun is unforgiving and after 20 minutes I tapped out with my team up 1-0.  By the end of the recess we lost 6-2. My team needed me but I was spent. 

We taught a class on Saturday and had a pretty good turnout.  We went through some basics, “What is your name?” “What do you like to do?” “How old are you?”.  One girl told me she liked to sing.  Junior asked her if she would sing for us.  She seemed very shy so I tried to make her a deal.  I told her I would sing if she would.  I held up my end of the bargain, she did not.  Nevertheless the kids enjoyed my performance.  We talked for a little longer and the kids told me about their families and what else they liked to do.  It was a great group of kids and their English will only continue to get better with the help of Jeanide and Junior.  Depending on when my brother Paul lands, I may take him to visit the English class with me when he arrives on December 13^th. 

The final place I’ll be working at is Bois d’avril up in the mountains.  I’ll be heading there tomorrow and returning the 12^th.  After that I will show Paul around Haiti. I definitely plan to pay a visit to Mission of Hope in Grand Goave. I spent 3 weeks there and want to say hello to some of my favorite students.  We will go all around Port-au-Prince, and maybe back up into the mountains. It seems surreal that my work in Haiti is coming to an end.  I know I’ve accomplished a lot, and I have enjoyed every second, but the work is far from done.  It’s hard to be informed and optimistic for the future of Haiti.  There are wonderful people here, Haitians and foreigners alike.  I just hope that their good intentions produce good results. 

Hang on,

Sean