I’m Alive!

I’m alive!

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve last updated my blog. I hit a phase where not only could I not think of anything to write about but I kinda lost touch with the world outside of Haiti. I hyper-focused on what’s going on here which in the end, made it harder for me to focus on my work. Regardless, I should have let you guys know I’m still alive and all is well. I’ll make sure to at least post a quick update in the future.

I’ve fallen into a steady routine the past couple weeks (which makes it hard to think of something to write about) and have been busy. I’m teaching three 2 1/2 hour classes a week, taking a creole class two days a week, and steadily working on redesigning the SOS DRS blog. My class is turning out to be a challenge; teaching a variety of age groups, in a language I’m not fluent in, is as hard as I expected. It’s especially hard to keep the younger students focused; they have school in the morning from 7-1 and my class from 2:30-5pm. That’s a lot of school for 13-16 year olds. But I’m making progress and my lessons are getting better each class. Though, I have to admit I’m probably learning more Creole than they are English. I try my best not to speak much Creole during class but I end up having to quite a bit. Especially when I’m giving directions. I speak Creole the most during break and after class and it’s helped my Creole a lot.

I’ve found I’m much better at answering students questions than I am at teaching to a lesson plan. Obviously, I have to stick to a lesson plan during class but my favorite part of teaching is helping my motivated students individually after class. I’m pretty good at explaining hard topics to a group of 2 or 3 and I love being able to see the effect I’m having on my students. It also gives me the chance to converse with them in Creole and get to know them better. I have three students in particular who I’m getting to know well; they usually stay after class for at least an hour. All three of them are laid back and very intelligent so spending time with them is enjoyable. With them after class there’s a good balance between studying and just hanging around talking with each other. All things considered my class is going pretty well. I had some difficulties at the beginning but I’m starting to move past them and becoming more confident in my teaching ability.

Sorry for not posting anything in such a long time! I’ll post another update soon, even if I can’t think of anything to write about, so you guys have an idea of what’s going on down here in Haiti.

Computers, Languages, and Playing with Kids!

Computer problems have plagued this past week and a half.  First Jared’s hard drive started to fail so I spent all of last weekend being a nerd and attempting to save his computer (attempting to make an ISO bootable in a VM, repairing his files, and a whole score of other things).  Thanks to Windows I managed to mess up my computer while attempting to fix Jared’s.  While attempting to install Windows XP on an external hard drive Windows decided to rewrite the menu that allows me to boot into both my operating systems.  It took a couple days but I finally have my back to normal; unfortunately I’m still struggling with Jared’s.

Apart from that things are going well here.  Yesterday, Jared, Father Scott, and I drove to the Haitian-Dominican border so Jared and I could renew our visas.  I can now say “I’ve been to the Dominican Republic!”  But not really, I was there for about five minutes.  I got my passport stamped to enter, walked out the door, turned around, went back in and  asked the same people to stamp my passport to leave.  Then I got my passport stamped to re-enter Haiti and voila!  A new three month visa.

I started my second English Class Wednesday; the first two classes went great.  I have 12 students, including Sebastián, and it’s going to be a challenging class to teach but I’m looking forward to it.  The hardest part is explaining English Grammar rules in Creole (and Spanish); I’ll probably end up learning more about foreign languages than my students.  It’s going to be a great experience and I’ll learn a lot about teaching from this class.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Sebastián and I’ve been learning Spanish at an incredible rate.  The only downside is the more Spanish I learn the more I confuse Spanish and Creole; I frequently use both languages in a single sentence.  For example earlier I said: Me gusta manje a cocinaste por supe.  Me gusta (Spanish – I like) manje a (Creole -the food) concinaste por (Spanish – cooked for) supe (Creole – dinner).  This causes a little confusion sometimes but I’m still making significant progress with both.  It’s a good feeling being able to speak (err, more like make a point) in all three of languages spoken in the community.

I’ve managed to become on the main translators in the community even though I’m nowhere near fluent in Creole or Spanish.  My funniest translating experience was today when, Shannon (only speaks English), Sebastián (only Spanish), and Papi George (Gatekeeper who only speaks Creole) and I went to the mache (place where food is sold on the street).  It was challenging and I couldn’t translate a number of sentences but it was a lot of fun.  Jumping between all three languages is great practice and helps me short my languages out a bit.

The Haitians that heard me speak in three languages treated me noticeably different than normal.  Instead of the usual “ou Ameriken, wi?” “You’re American, yes?” most asked “Ki nasyonalite ou ye?” “What nationality are you?” They seemed surprised when I told them I’m American.  A few even started casual conversations with me and didn’t ask me to buy something or give them something, which is a huge change.  I can barely converse in Spanish and Creole and I’m already seeing the benefits of learning them.

The highlight of the past weeks has been finally going out and playing with the kids in the camp!  I wanted to go out into the camp more my first couple months but no one seemed comfortable with the idea.  Sebastián changed that; less than a week after his arrival he started playing games with the kids.  Sebastián and I go out and play with the kids a couple times a week.  I absolutely love it.  We play games, exercise, and talk with the crowd of kids, usually 20 or more, that end up with us.  Sebastián has a gift with kids and somehow with barely speaking Creole he keeps things pretty organized.

I noticed very quickly the children are very violent with each other.  They push, shove, and hit each other over small things like who gets to stand next to us; it gets even worse when we’re trying to get them to take turns jumping rope.  Slowly but surely they’re learning not to be violent, at least when we’re around.  I find myself saying “Si nou goumen nou pa kab jwé avek nou (If you fight we cannot play with you) and pa goumen pa goumen (don’t fight, don’t fight) quite a bit.  This presents some difficulties but overall they listen pretty well.

The kids love playing with us and I’ve started to get to know a couple pretty well.  Sebastián and I have both had numerous kids latch onto us for an hour or more wanting to hold our hands and sit in our laps; it’s adorable.  On Friday, I had one boy about the age of 7 who stayed right next to me the entire time we we’re outside.  He barely talked, I never learned his name, but he held my hand, hugged my leg, or sat on my lap whenever possible.  I’ve met a lot of adults in the camp from playing with the kids, especially mothers.  People who walk by stop and talk with us; anyone who speaks any English wants to practice with me.  I usually spend a part of my time outside conversing in English with a person or two correcting them as we talk.

Walking out into the camp and hearing kids yelling “Josh! Josh” instead of “Blanc! Blanc!” gives me a strong feeling of accomplishment.  Having the kids run up to me smiling whenever the see me helps me know I’m making a difference.

The girl I’m holding in the pictures is pretty much the cutest thing ever.  Her name is Angeline and she lives in the little shop right outside our gate.  I’m convinced she is the happiest 1 year old in existence.  She never stops smiling and absolutely loves Sebastián and I (and everyone other person she meets).  She runs right to me every time I see her and wants me to pick her up.  She’ll stay in my arms for as long as I can hold her but never gets fussy when I put her down (though she may latch onto my leg).  I taught her how to play peek-a-boo and she covers her face giggling every time I see her.  She’s absolutely adorable.

Overall it’s been a busy, but very good couple weeks.  I’m going to be writing posts for the SOSDRS blog (sosdrs.wordpress.com) soon.  I’ll be sure to post a link whenever I do; I just started working a series of posts about CRS.

Hope everyone reading this is doing well!  Thanks for all your positive feedback!

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CRS Shelters

The run-off election between Martelly and Manigot was held this past weekend.  I didn’t hear anything about excessive violence or corruption and apart from some difficulties with the voting process it appears to have gone well.  The preliminary results will be released on March 31st and the final results on April 16th (my birthday!).  Hopefully things stay calm when the results are released but I’m doubtful they will.

CRS resumed building shelters yesterday and as of today they’ve constructed a total of and will continue to build four a day.  They’re building 200 to start and if things continue to progress well they are planning on building even more.  I’m not exactly sure on the plans, all the meetings have been in Creole, but I think they plan on building a 1000 more shelters and ten schools if they are able to continue.  The houses are only given to people living in the camp so this project is going to drastically reduce the camp’s size; the first 200 shelters will remove between 800-1000 people.  I’ve posted pictures of the camp from today and as the project progresses I’ll continue to post pictures; the camp should noticeably reduce in size if no new people move in.

The Project Coordinator Micheline (you’ll see her in one of the pictures) is the right person to be tackling a project of this magnitude in an area as difficult as Solino.  This entire project has been a fight for her and her love for the Haitian people really showed through on the first day of building.  She couldn’t contain her excitement as the first shipment of wood was brought into Solino; it was by far the happiest I’ve seen her.  I’m  happy to be playing the virtually non-existent role I’ve personally had in this project and hopefully as I learn more Creole I can be more involved.  It’s going to amazing to see the camp slowly decrease in size as people are moved out.

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Hope everyone back in the states is doing well!  Thanks for all of your comments and support, it’s great to hear from all of you.

Anpil Bagay (Many Things)

It’s been a busy week here in Port-au-Prince. My ESL course ended last week and a lot of my time has been spent preparing for the class beginning on March 30th. The problems in Carcasse set the first ESL course off to a late, disorganized start which caused problems throughout the entire course. This time around things are well-organized and everything is going smoothly. We learned from the mistakes we made in the first class and the next course is off to a good start.

Even though I’m not teaching I’ve been spending just as much time in the classroom. We created a placement test; testing 28 students who sporadically show up over the course of two weeks is time-consuming.  22 of these students are able to take the course.  Only six of these students are able to attend class in the morning so we moved both classes to the afternoon. Since the ESL class is primarily my responsibility I had to tell these students they would not be able to talk the course. This was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in Haiti.  I felt awful but neither Eric, who’s going to be teaching the other class, or I have time to teach two classes a day.

Remarkably, we easily split the remaining 22 students into two 11 person classes. The advanced class is composed entirely of men between the ages of 21-31. Eric is teaching this class because he doesn’t speak any Creole yet and he wont need to with that class. Five of his students (four of them my old students) can converse at a high level and can translate for students who are struggling. So this leaves me to teach the beginners class.  Teaching this class is definitely going to be an interesting experience. Only one student can converse at all; the rest know nothing more than a couple memorized phrases and some basic grammar.  This means I’ll have to explain thing in Creole on a regular basis.  I can hold simple conversations in Creole and follow a conversation but teaching is going to test my speaking.  My class has eight girls and three guys. Five of them are 21-24 years old, two girls and all three guys, and the other six girls are between the ages of 12-16. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to deal with this age gap but I’ll think of something.  I’m going to have to organize this class much differently than my first class.

In other news, CRS constructed their first four shelters on Wednesday. It was an exciting day; Micheline, the project coordinator, was beyond ecstatic. It was impossible not to get caught up in her emotion as she proudly shouted things in Creole from the back of a pick up truck driving down the market street as the supplies were delivered. She fought tooth and nail to get this project approved and it means the world to her that it finally has begun. I’ll post pictures and go into more detail about CRS tomorrow.

After I spent the morning with CRS on Wednesday, Sebastian, Shannon, Reginald, and I went next door to the Missionaries of Charity. The Missionaries of Charity are a group of religious sisters who’ve been in Solino for (I think) around 20 years. They have an entire building dedicated to housing the sick and we spent about an hour visiting the floor for girls and women. They have patients ranging from 5-75+ years old and most of them have Tuberculosis.  Apparently Wednesday is one of the days families are allowed to visit so I spent a majority of my time talking to patients with no visitors.

The female TB patients are primarily between the ages of 18-30. Seeing so many beautiful, sweet, young women suffering is a brutal reminder of the fragility of life even in our prime. Despite their pain many still had eyes filled with hope and a warm smile when I stopped to talk to them. They were patient as we talked in Creole and they laughed with me as I repeatedly confused my foreign languages and used Spanish words. The little girls, like all the children I’ve met in Haiti, had big smiles and laughed the entire time we played dominoes with them. The children too shy to talk always make me smile. They just stare at you with big eyes giggling uncontrollably never answering a question. A small number of these women have slipped into a state of despair, misery, and depression. There eyes are glossed and completely void of life.  Most of them didn’t respond when I talked to them; they just looked at me then went back to staring into space.  I can’t begin to describe the emotional affect the girls in this state had on me.

The Haitian people have secured a place in my heart and being able to converse with them makes my love for them continue to grow. I find myself enjoying Haiti more each day; the simplicity of life here is oddly comforting.  My perspective on life is constantly changing for the better here enabling me to look at the things I’ve learned throughout my life in a new light.  This has helped me to better understand subjects, ideas, and concepts that I stopped thinking about long ago.

One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed is how much my understanding of foreign languages has increased. I had an “Aha!” moment recently and all at once realized the best way for me to study and analyze languages. This realization pushed me past a plateau I was stuck on and I’ve been learning at an incredible rate since then.

Overall it’s been a good week. Sebastian, Shannon (two new members of the community) and I get along great and they make life here more a lot more fun. I’m not quite sure how, but we manage to have conversations despite the language barrier; Shannon speaks absolutely no Spanish, Sebastian speaks very little English, and I know nothing more than the basics of Spanish.  We manage to make it work. Sebastian and I are similar in a lot of ways and I badly want to have a normal conversation with him but the language situation makes a normal conversation impossible. As frustrating as this is it gives me extra motivation to study Spanish while I’m here.

The longer I stay in Haiti the less I want to leave. I have such a greater sense of purpose and belonging here than in the US. I’m planning on staying her for an extra three weeks; I’m learning so much each day I want to squeeze the maximum possible days out of this experience. I’ll have finished teaching by then and I’ll be able to converse comfortably in Creole. I’ll be able to accomplish a lot in these last few weeks.

Blaring music, barking dogs, the faint murmuring of voices.  Sitting here listening to these sounds of Solino I’ve grown to love I know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.  If I could I’d stay here the entire summer.

 

The Garden!

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Earlier this week we finished planting the garden!  I wish I had taken photos of the area before we cleaned it up; it was a mess.  Trash and rubble covered the entire area.  We planted a number of different plants including lettuce, corn, tomatoes, and eggplant.  We also started composting about a month ago, you can see the picture of what we have so far.  Hopefully in a couple months we will have some soil we can use in the garden.

Our next project is figuring out what to do with the garbage fire pit that is in pretty rough shape.  It’s cracked in half and filled to the brim in ash as you can see in the photo.  The only way we can dispose of the garbage is burning, which is a shame, burning plastic is definietly not good.  But there’s no other way we can get rid of it besides throwing it in the canal like everyone else.

There’s also a picture of Sebastian I took while walking around taking pictures of the garden.

Hope all my readers are doing well!

An International Community

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The number of people in the community has grown to 14. Our latest arrival is Sebastian, a 24-year-old from Chile who just graduated from university. He worked with SOS Drs after the earthquake in Chile and is going to be in Port-au-Prince for six months. His arrival makes the language situation here even more interesting since he only speaks Spanish. This hasn’t been much of a problem for him, he’s an incredibly outgoing person and somehow still manages to communicate with everyone; even the people he doesn’t share a common language with. Earlier today I walked outside to find him talking with a group of Haitians waiting to be treated at the medical clinic on our property. None of them spoke Spanish so he just sat there with a notebook and asked people how to say random objects. At multiple times he had the entire group of people laughing as he tried to ask a question through charades. He’s only been here for two days but I can tell he’s going to be a great person to have around the community.

I’m sure my Spanish is going to improve a great deal over the next three months I’m going to be spending here! Hopefully I’ll walk away from this experience conversational in Spanish and Kreoyl. Now that we have three languages spoken here we have started to designate a certain language that will be spoken at each meal. It’s a lot of fun and dinner table conversations are where I learn the most Kreoyl. I’ve learned enough that I can follow a conversation and sometimes even participate a good amount. It’s great to finally communicate with the members of the community who can’t speak English very well.

We have five different nationalities represented in our community; Haitian, Indonesian, Chilean, Belgian, and American. Theresia is from Indonesia; she has worked with Father Scott ever since the tsunami struck there in 2004. She is incredibly organized and does a lot to keep the organization running smoothly, she takes care of pretty much all the small things (as well as many of the big things). She speaks more languages than I can keep track of including, Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Swahili, Kreoyl, English, and she’s working on Spanish. Sister Claire-Marie was born in Belgium but now lives in Italy. She’s been here for a couple of months and will be leaving soon she’s very talkative and has conversations with random people from our roof pretty much every day. Her first language is French but she speaks English almost flawlessly. She also speaks Croatian, Italian, and some German.

There are 6 Haitians living in the community; Msyr, and Madnm. Michelle (we call them Mama and Papa Michelle), Vickens, Wesbee, Marc Daly, and Reginol. Mama and Papa Michelle are a married couple in their sixties who do most of the cleaning and cooking in the house. They are both incredibly sweet and very patient with everyone learning Kreyol. Mama Michelle is shy and doesn’t talk all that much while Papa Michelle talks more and always take the time to make sure we understand; he’s a very good teacher. He has a lot of knowledge about agriculture and is a huge with the garden and composting. Vickens is a 19-year-old originally from Port-au-Prince. I’ve mentioned him before; he’s the one who drove when we went to Carcasse. He works like crazy and his main job is fixing the cars (pretty much a full-time job) and managing any other electrical needs around the house. He does all of this and more while still attending school. Wesbee, my Kreoyl teacher, is originally from a part of Northern Haiti ,Gonaives. He speaks Spanish along with a good amount of English. He taught Spanish along with Kreoyl before the arrival of Sebastian. Next we have Marc Daly, one of the lead project managers from Jeremie. He’s in his last semester of law school, speaks very well, and has a very strong presence about him. He’s politically active and strives to bring about change in Haiti and break the negative mindset of the Haitian youth. A dream which he very well may fulfill. Lastly we have Reginol, the newest Haitian to enter the community. He’s a funny guy and loves to joke around with everyone. He doesn’t live at the community but he eats with us and spends the entire day helping out around the house.

The 5 Americans here are Jared, Shannon, Eric, Father Scott, and me. Jared is from a small town in Kansas and this is his second time in Haiti. He’s very good at fixing things, he works as a carpenter right now, but he also has completed medical school. He’s been here since February and probably will be staying for more than six months. Shannon and Eric both arrived recently and I haven’t gotten to know them very well yet. Shannon is from Wisconsin and just graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in International Studies and is working alongside Theresia to lighten her workload. Eric is from Chicago and is going to law school in the fall. He’ll be here for three months and will be teaching an ESL course along with me starting the last week in March. Father Scott, like Theresia and Sister Claire, speaks an absurd number of languages. He speaks all of the Romance languages, Indonesian, Kreoyl, and I’m sure others I don’t know about. He decided to become a priest after he graduated from medical school so he is also a trained doctor like Jared.

I’ll write about certain people in more depth in the future but this will give you a general idea of the people for now. The couple in the pictures is Carrie and Dr. Andrew who I’ve mentioned before, they left Haiti a few weeks ago. I don’t have pictures of Shannon, Eric, or Sebastian yet but I’ll try to post some tomorrow.

 

What to Write About?

As you may have noticed I’ve been posting less frequently recently.  This is partially because I’ve been busy but mainly it is because I have had an epic case of writers block.   There is so much I could talk about and discuss about my experiences but I can’t seem to put anything into a coherent blog post.  I want to get back into the habit of writing about my experiences but I need some help coming up with ideas. Anyone have any ideas?  Is there anything in particular anyone would like me to write about?

Here’s a completely unrelated picture for any family or friends wanting a recent photo.  \

Walking around with a tray of flowers on your head is harder than it looks (No, I didn’t drop them).  I still don’t understand how Haitians manage to walk around all day with things balanced on their heads.  I would break so many things if I tried to do that.

A Walk Through Solino

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Monday-Thursday of this week I spent walking through Solino with CRS looking for crumbled houses.  I’ve mentioned the poverty and destruction of Solino a couple times and finally I have some pictures to show everyone; words just can’t accurately express Solino.

What I haven’t mentioned is the canal filled with trash you see in the pictures.  As I said before, most of Port-au-Prince doesn’t have trash removal, the canal is where most of the trash in Solino goes.  CRS cleaned the canal roughly a year ago but, as you can see, this didn’t stop the people from continuing to throw their trash in it.  Until the mentality about littering changes and there is a sanitation system in place cleaning the canal is futile.

Also, the pig in the canal is by far the biggest pig I have ever seen; it has plenty to eat that’s for sure.

Children of Solino

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For the past four days I have walked around Solino with CRS. My favorite part has been interacting with all the kids running around. They find foreigners incredibly fascinating and it takes nothing more than a smile and wave to get almost any kid to laugh; it makes there day when we talk and play with them. It continues to astound me how these kids can be so full of life in such terrible circumstances. They all have beautiful smiles that somehow manage to make you forget the circumstances they are living in, even if only for a moment.

I’d write more but my computer is going to die any minute and I don’t have access to a charger at this point. I’ll continue to post pictures from my walks with CRS over the next couple days.

Also, I’d like to thank the Saratogian (For those who don’t know it’s Saratoga Spring’s local newspaper) for posting my blog on their website.  Your support is greatly appreciated.  Hope everyone who finds my blog this way enjoys my posts!

While I’m at it I’d like to thank everyone else who has been reading my blog and all your positive comments.  It means a lot to know you’ve been enjoying my ramblings!

(Note: The picture that doesn’t have any kids in it was taken by a little girl I let take a picture with my camera.  The smiling women in the picture is her Mom.)

You Live in Solino…Why?

(Note I wrote this yesterday but my computer died before I could post it.  I’ll try and write a post about my experiences today with CRS soon.)

“You Live in Solino… Why?” This is the reaction of many people when told our community is located in Solino. Solino is considered the second most dangerous area of Port-au-Prince; only Citè Sole has more crime. We are one of the fist NGO’s to set up a community in Solino, other organizations have tried but most have left. At first it seemed odd that a small organization would take on such a huge responsibility but actually it is our size that makes it possible for us to be here. The people of Solino have high expectations for large NGO’s and when these expectations are not met the people often get violent. It also helps that we are a Catholic organization; Haitians have incredible respect for priests and other religious figures and this is part of the reason we have not had any problems.

This situation can be frustrating at times because we have limited interaction with the 6,500 person tent community literally right outside our door. We may be a small NGO but people still have a certain expectations of us. For example, yesterday Jared (a member of the Community from Kansas) and I did some work in the garden and after bought a soda from a shop in a tent right outside our gate. We stayed and talked to the shopkeeper for a while and during the conversation she said “Poukisa Pè Scott pa bay nou manje?” (Why does Father Scott not give us food?). I wanted to point out that her asking the question is the exact reason we can’t, but instead I shrugged my shoulders and pretended not to understand. Sadly, if we give her food then the 6,499 other people living in the tents would come demanding food. We are nowhere near large enough to deal with something like that.

We’ve been making progress and are beginning to work with the people of Solino. We are working with CRS who tomorrow will begin a housing project in Solino. I’m not exactly sure what our role in this project is going to be; right now our main contribution is allowing them to use our community as an office and safe place in Solino. It doesn’t seem like much but us being here is the only reason they are able to work in Solino. They attempted a project here 8 months ago but left after things became dangerous; this is their first time back. They’re locating crumbled buildings in Solino, hiring locals to clear the rubble, and then building houses in its place for people living in tents. These will not be permanent houses but they will help prevent tent cities from turning into slums and give jobs even if only for a short time.

Our collaboration with CRS finally has allowed us to go out and see Solino first hand. A week ago members from our community and workers from CRS were given a tour of Solino by local Haitians. There were probably fifteen of us in all; it must have been quite a site seeing twelve foreigners parading around the back streets of Solino. We walked around “Ti Cheri” and identified a number of crumbled buildings that could be replaced. The back streets of Haiti are like nothing I ever imagined; thin dark alleyways big enough for a single person, reeking of sewage, and people packed into buildings like sardines. Almost no sunlight reaches these houses because they are so close together, the paths are jagged and broken, and at some points the paths are so steep you have to side step down clutching the wall for support. It don’t understand how people can live in these conditions; it’s absolutely horrendous.

I’ve forced myself to stop focusing on the conditions these people live in and instead focus on the people themselves. Walking through these dark alleys its amazing how much life there still is among these people; especially the children. They laugh and play just like children anywhere else in the world and they think foreigners are incredibly fascinating. Walking by one of kids will shout “Blanc!” (meaning white but it’s used to refer to any foreigner) and a whole group of giggling kids will appear. They think its hilarious when we try to speak creole with them and its sure to make them smile when we speak poorly.

After my experience walking around tomorrow I’ll write another post about Ti Cheri.