Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Loving is Easy: Starting School

On Monday we started school at Christian Light School, Petit Goave.
Students begin gathering in the small courtyard at 7:30. They are supposed to line up by grade: 3 year olds against the wall, then 4 year olds, 5 year olds, 6 year olds/first graders and finally 7 year olds/second graders beside the stairs.
Somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 we arrive, Madame Beverly and Madame Rose, the directors, Jonas, the handy man/custodian, Saintilus, a student now living with us, and myself. We deposit our belongings in the office, all the way greeting and being greeted by children and a few parents.
There’s lots of grabbing, hand-holding, hugging and kissing. There’s lots of smiling and of course some tears from the tiny ones.

That first day there was lots of crying. It seemed the whole 3 year old class was weeping. A few of the tiny ones had tears wetting their faces silently, which seemed worse than the ones audibly wailing.  
Some of them came with handy green aprons stitched boldly with their names in red thread. Many of them don’t like to talk at first, especially to a white person. Blans are yet an unfounded phenomenon to them.
But apart from those frightened, bewildered little ones, Monday was rife with smiles. Everyone was happy to be there. Beverly was amazed at the number of parents milling in the courtyard.
“Wow!” she repeated.
Clearly parents have come to recognize what a good thing is happening here, what a blessing for their children to attend CLS, and they are as eager for school as their offspring.

Every morning after lines are formed the students pledge and sing. They sing the Haitian National Anthem, right hand held horizontal with thumb touching the heart. Then they recite the Pledge to the Christian flag in English and French. And they sing one of the bouncy Sunday school songs. This week it was “God is So Good.” The words are simple and beautifully true, ringing forcefully as the students jump up and down to the beat.
Bondye m’ nan bon. Bondye m’ nan bon. Bondye m’ nan bon. E li bon pou mwen. God is so good. God is so good. God is so good. He’s so good to me,” we all clap and sing, bouncing up on our toes like fools (“I will become even more undignified than this…” ~2 Samuel 6:22) before landing hard and freezing on the final word.
Beverly always performs with the same enthusiasm as the students, although many of them like to spin in circles and she’ll face forward. This seems wise, as most of those spinning students will then collapse into one another, or any nearby obstacle.

Each song is offered in English, French and Creole.
The teachers sing, also. Before we go out to join the masses of orange (the school “uniform” is the orange t-shirt printed with the name and logo paired with navy bottoms of free design), the teachers gather in the nearest classroom and sing a devotional song. We use song sheets of paired choruses in English and French or Creole. We always sing in two languages, pray together, and then greet one another with hugs, kisses, and “Jesus loves you, Jezi renmen ou.”
After this cheerful exchange, we troop outside, shooing students along, and the morning routine commences.

What I remember best about Monday, my first day teaching as a full-time missionary in Haiti, is the happiness. The students were so happy to be there.
They didn’t care that our classroom was dirty, gritty with dust and hung with spider webs. They didn’t mind that they had only narrow benches from which to sit and work. There was no chalk board, no desks, not even a water bucket.
Instead, they said “Wow!” as they turned into the classroom from the dismal concrete hall, faces lighting up at the light in the room with its finely painted white walls cleverly designed with bold borders and real windows, not just cement blocks with artful holes.
They were delighted to sit in such a room, and delighted to have not one but two teachers, two grown persons who spoke to them with interest, asked and used their names and sang with a smile. Of course I had the added advantage of novelty: a blan to stay with them all day, as eager to give hugs and head pats as they were eager to receive them.
But my dear Haitian co-teacher (hired the previous evening) Madame Alice proved herself more than competent in her immediate seizure of control and engagement. While I stood awkwardly at a loss, uncertain of schedule and placement, Madame Alice roamed the room, pulling students off one bench to fill another, tipping up chins and asking names, singing about the day with loud, instigative clapping.

 Yes, it was good to be in that room with its painted walls and windows letting in the sunshine of the day. Downstairs was perpetually gloomy as the rooms were basic gray and the “windows” chiseled out cement blocks disallowing much entrance of sun. Upstairs a step into the hallway and the breeze welcomed you; the cheery yellow of the large open space at the front of the building set you at ease. I was certainly grateful to be up there.

It wasn’t smooth by any means, that first day. There were the expected hiccups and the unavoidable awkwardness. Readily obvious was my own lack of Creole and French paired with Madame Alice’s lack of English. Lately I find myself unable to complete a sentence in any of the three languages, splicing together words to make semi-coherent babble. That’s how we communicate here, Beverly and I. We say what we can in whatever language we can. Then we wait for a decent translator to clarify.
On Monday there were things to pass out and rules to set. There was a room to arrange and tallies to take: who has their books, who has a shirt, who brought a water bottle, who remembers how to properly use a toilet. The numbers are always disappointing.
As of this week, the second week of school, no child in our class of 19 has the complete set of books, and most are missing half. Anyone who teaches knows the frustration of an unprepared class, of students lacking books or materials. You can scold a child who left his book at home, encourage or shame her into remembering it tomorrow, but you can’t in any decent conscience scold a child whose parents can’t afford the books. You certainly can’t scold a child who doesn’t have books because the bookstore didn’t have them. Or they haven’t been printed yet. (We learned that the government sought to delay the first day of school until October, although most schools had set to open the 12th of September. Many high schools thus began with the books not printed due to the confusion.)

Madame Alice helped arrange the students to be evenly spaced, tucking their backpacks out of the way and reiterating in French her name, where we were, and students’ names.
Students filed in and out to use the bathroom. This was the cause of our first cas d’urgence. One little girl unwittingly locked herself in the bathroom, pushing in the lock and then holding onto the knob so the door could not open to let her out. I noticed the crisis when a blockade of students formed in the hall, and drawing near, heard the wails of Eneldine inside.
Not being able to speak Creole enough to say, “Let go of the door!” or “Back away!” I tried to comfort.
“It’s okay. Eneldine, calm down,” I cooed, and told Jonas we needed a key. I didn’t know if such a key existed. But we needed to open that door.
Meantime, I returned to the room and rifled through my bag in search of a lock-pick, a bobby pin perhaps. I came up with nothing save a nail file, and fruitlessly tried to slide this between lock and frame. I thought I might have to throw my shoulder against the door (it seemed flimsy enough to give by my feeble force,) but was saved from this dangerous endeavor (the risk of bowling over Eneldine and causing far more chaos than necessary stayed me) when the door clicked and I wrenched it open.
There was Eneldine, tear stained and rubbing a knuckle across her eyes, sobs subsiding.
I squatted down to her, saying soothing nothings and then demonstrated the door lock mechanism.
Pa puisse, Don’t push it, I said, demonstrating that by pushing the button the door would stick, but by merely turning the knob the lock released and the door was free.
Then we splashed water on her face and dried with my skirt and we returned to class.  

Eneldine has Down’s Syndrome.  It’s a miracle she attends school at all—Haitian society tends to hush up mental illness and handicaps, tucking away the needy in dim back rooms rather than permitting them in public. In an environment where there is virtually no special needs care available, this is not excusable but is perhaps understandable.
I shared with Beverly my surprise that Eneldine attends school.
She looked at me with those raised eyebrows and still face that accompanies the “I know—it’s a terrible reality” situations.
“Yes,” she agreed. “And she would be hidden away, if her father weren’t a church member.”
Well, Praise God! Church members are setting themselves apart.
So Eneldine is part of her class, and Beverly has been training the others to watch out for her.
“They’re the ones who are going to have to take care of her in the future,” she says. It’s true.
I have no idea what the future holds for Eneldine. I wish there was more I could offer her.
But her presence in class is a blessing in surprising ways.

Special needs, handicaps, disabilities, people with these conditions have always been rather a mystery to me. I’ve never had a special acclimation or understanding of proper behavior. Most of my life I’ve over-thought, walked on eggshells or behaved abnormally because I thought I should around people with disabilities.
Now, there is no way to treat Eneldine differently. I can’t.
There are eighteen other children in that room: the smallest in the school (there are 30 six year olds!) All of these children need attention and aid—some of them are behind, learning at a slower pace than their peers. But mostly they are just seven years old, an age of imagination and activity and affection. They all want to be sat with, worked with, touched and loved on. And I want to do so for each one of them.
I cannot make the extra time or cloning myself to sit always with Eneldine, to hold her pencil or chalk, to keep pressure on her shoulder or hold her hand, have her repeat every word after me. I must treat her like I treat the others, with equal love and affection and occasional spurning: Wait. Tann. Chita. Sit. Not right now. Pa kounyeya. Demain. Tomorrow.
Eneldine, walk, mache. Eneldine, kanpe, stand up. Eneldine, let go. Pa kenbe.

Beverly says right now she’s being “mean.”
“I’m being really…firm with the first graders right now. Because I want them to learn!”
She tells us this while driving home from school, having started English classes with the five and six year olds.
“I’ll be nice later. Now, it’s, ‘Oh, pa respekte! Ale! Oh, disrespectful, go! If you are talking, I don’t want you here.’”
This morning she sent one of my class out from Recreation because he was talking during prayer. She had him write lines in the kitchen, bending over the bench to copy “I will not talk during prayer” ten times.

This Monday started the second week of school, when the first and second graders remain until 2 PM and a routine should begin to set. And with that routine must come discipline, maintenance of rules.
In the morning we gathered for assembly, taking advantage of that large open yellow breezy space upstairs, the students standing in their horizontal lines, seven year olds back against the wall, three year olds at the front.
Beverly called three students at a time to lead the group in song (The B-I-B-L-E) and the Bible verse (John 3:16), then all were sent back to listen to Madame Patricia read the story. We use the Jesus Storybook Bible in Creole to read from, and the larger printed English edition to show pictures. While Madame Patricia read, frequently stopping to ask the children questions, Madame Agenose walked among the students with the picture-book.
Today we heard the story of the Way Made in the Sky, when John baptizes Jesus and God’s Spirit descends as a dove.
The kids made appreciatively disgusted faces when Madame Patricia told that John ate locusts with honey kriket ak myel.

After the story was finished, Madame Beverly and Madame Rose took the floor again to give announcements. Students were reminded to keep their pencil cases and Bible verse notebooks in the classroom, to bring a water bottle every day (and tell Mom today if they needed one), and to properly use the toilet.
Three year olds possibly need aid using a toilet. They may be so tiny they can barely scramble onto it, they probably cannot finagle the buttons and zippers of their shorts, and don’t understand the imperative chore of washing their hands.
The returning students know all of these things, and are accustomed to dealing with the complications of tucking undershirts into waistbands and pulling belts snug. They know to wet their hands, rub the soap into a lather and rinse. They know that only one at a time holding the hall pass (a former medicine jar) can they exit the classroom and trek to the bathroom at the back of the school.
The first floor restroom students use consists of a tile floor with central drain, two stalls and two toilets. Perhaps when designed the surfaces were white. I certainly hope they were cleaner than they are now.
The restroom is unisex and no, the stall doors do not close.
Before you freak out and start to call Protective Services, remember where we are.
We are in Haiti.

This is a sentence Beverly and I recite often, perhaps more than we ought, being insensitive to our Haitian family. However, Reality knocks.
This is Haiti. This is the Third World.
Our reality is training children how to use the toilet because their reality doesn’t have toilets.

The returning students know how to use a toilet. They did so at school before: sitting on the toilet then exiting the restroom, washing their hands with soap and reconfiguring their clothes before returning to class.
However, these returning students left school in June and many of them spent two months without access to a toilet. They used a latrine, a hole beneath a cement seat shielded by a tattered curtain that moves in the breeze. The lucky ones did, anyway.
The rest squatted over a drain or a ditch when the need presented itself. Wherever, whenever.
The little boys know to face a wall and let loose. The little girls know to drop their drawers and squat.
While driving last week we passed a grown woman baring her backside to the street as she squatted down beside the road while her friend waited.
This is the example many of our children have at home.

It’s agonizing.
Modern plumbing such as we fortunate first-worlders enjoy today is not a new invention. Neither is soap.
On Friday I watched a disturbing number of children squat down on the restroom floor in the inevitable muddy water. Jonas and I crossed paths in front of the restroom to see someone had pooped in one of the water scoopers we use to pour water over hands for washing.
Jonas picked it up and dumped it, and I went to eat lunch.
You are probably disgusted. I was still hungry and, as schedules and food are not often predictable, but exertion is, knew I must eat to keep up.
And I enjoyed my rice and beans, like always.

I also enjoyed watching the kids eat, afterwards.
The last time Beverly and I were in Port au Prince we went to Epi D’Or with some of the elder students from the CLS PAP campus, as Beverly does every time she visits. As we sat around a few tables shoved together, I leaned in close to Beverly so she could hear me over the din and over amplified music.
“It’s good to see them eat,” I said as we looked at the five students, young men between seventeen and nineteen years old, consumed with consuming their dinner. At the other end of the table were two old friends of mine, young men in their twenties, also eating dinner. It was good to see all of them eat, to witness this consumption and not just take their word that that day they’d gotten a meal. Schedules and food are not always predictable. Just like some of our students in Petit Goave, some of these dear young men are guaranteed food only at school.
That is agonizing.

No one should have to be hungry. No one should have to worry about where that next meal is coming from, or be dependent upon their school attendance for a meal.
Of course, hunger is a problem all around the world, from the United States to Haiti to Korea to the Philippines. There are homeless and hungry people everywhere. That doesn’t mean the fact is less agonizing.
And if you are a rather self-absorbed person such as am I, you don’t really consider most of those hungry people. If, like me, you enjoy food, you are always happy to eat. Maybe you are even grateful for your food and express appreciation. Maybe you are conscious of waste.
Even so, you probably take food for granted, sometimes. You probably don’t list hunger on the lengthy tally of daily concerns.  I hope you don’t.
Just like I hope you don’t also have to worry about whether your drinking water is contaminated, whether there are mosquito larvae growing in your wash water, whether your neighbor’s latrine is overflowing or if you can afford the book list for your child’s school year, the list that costs perhaps $35 USD.
Here in Haiti, all of these concerns are pressing and habitual. So is common safety. Just last week in Ti Goave a man was jumped and beaten by a gang after dark. Later that night the same group assaulted a woman in the cemetery. Our host pastor told us this while scrolling through his news feed, further affirming his rule that no one, particularly “no girls,” be out after dark.
Beverly and I readily agreed.

But many of our students live in homes without proper walls. Recently I wrote about Jameson, who lives with six other people in the house with the magenta walls. The house with the flimsy plywood door that sticks at the top, down at the end of an alley of houses similar to his. Perhaps there’s not anything worth stealing, nothing to interest thieves, but when you’ve got nothing, anything can be tempting.
Last week Jonas was walking after dark and some thieves stole his phone. He was walking by the school where we work every day.
Danger is very real, very close.
Disease and contamination and hunger are real, too.
They are just part of the norm for these children, our dear darling students who love and yearn to be loved on.
Who deserve classrooms finely decorated with wall borders, alphabet and number charts, birthday announcements, projects, bookshelves sagging with books and surrounded by cushions, a carpet upon which to sit and read, building blocks, desks labeled with their names and stuffed full of papers and pencils and crayons. They deserve more attention, aid for their struggles. They deserve class parties and celebrations with cake and punch. They deserve the best that we can give them, iPads, a projector, a clean whiteboard easily visible to the back of the class. Clean floors, clean bathrooms, ample soap and a nurse available to treat all the little ailments that can’t be addressed at home.
What we have to offer is much less than all of the aforementioned, most of which is standard in the States or any other first-world country that takes pride in education.
Haiti takes pride in education, too. You won’t find a prouder group than students in their freshly pressed uniform, freshly shined shoes, freshly oiled and braided hair. They are impeccable and spotless while we blan teachers sweat through our shirts and gather dust on our feet.

But as our school lacks electricity and running water, never mind all of those extravagant comforts, the first offering we have is love. Then, we choose what we can buy and supply at the school. There’s always something lacking, but bit by bit we can give them more.
It might not sound like much, our classroom on the second floor of a rented building. Inside there are seven student desks at which two or three sit, most often leaning forward on the bench as there is no back-support. There is a book shelf in the back corner currently holding pencil cases with already battered crayons, a couple of pencils, and some cayes, notebooks; there are slates and clipboards, the Jesus Storybook Bible in Creole, and a set of French-English dictionaries the children delight in perusing—the only books yet in our hopeful “library.”
There’s a bench at the front where Madame Alice sets her purse and I my folder, and upon which the water bucket rests. There’s a chalk board of difficult legibility on the front wall and a small wastebasket beside the door. On the wall is a steadily growing supply of posters, some of them purchased at the dollar store Stateside, some dusted off from Beverly’s office, and some drawn by me. They’re held up precariously with tacky blue painter’s tape ever at odds with the dusty walls. On the back wall, under the lovely bold border, there is a dubious line of name cards, where each child wrote her or his name with new crayons. Madame Alice and Madame Rachelle (I’ve accepted this new spelling of my name) have name cards, too.
These are my favorite decoration after the children. For the children are what make the classroom.
They are the light more cheerful and brilliant than even the Caribbean sun.
They are the joy and the hope. They are the reason we carry on through the frustrations and the agonies of reality, of such squalor and tragedy in such a broken, beautiful world.
They are who Jesus loves most, and so we love them, too.

But it’s not hard to love these children.
My hands never get tired of rubbing little boy heads, hair shorn short for school. My arms never get tired of hugging little girls close, of picking them up and spinning them around. My voice never gets so tired it won’t lift to speak to them, continuously calling out the English phrases and the odd Creole and French words, making that semi-coherent babble we use to communicate.
There will be more frustration. There will be more agony. There may be a time, or more than one occasion, on which I feel burned out, exhausted physically and emotionally, and yearn only to flee back to the first world.

I was cautioned this weekend that perhaps I’m still in the “honeymoon phase” with Haiti. I’ve been here less than one month, after all. I’m in such golden joy over being here I haven’t truly noticed the difficulties. Perhaps. But does time matter?

I feel I’ve lived here for months. Every return to the house is a welcome home-coming, no matter how much I’ve enjoyed the excursion or how weary of noise and commotion (this house is ever flooded with people and action.) Every sunset is a gorgeous miracle. Every morning greeting the banana trees at my window is a delight.
All the lunacy of life here makes us laugh. We shake our heads a lot, Beverly and I. And though I may frequently throw up my hands, and though we often feel the need to retreat to our sanctuary beside the ocean for some peace and quiet, life here is good.
I don’t go a day without laughing and cuddling.

Last Tuesday night I had a panic attack.
I’d been suffering from a cold, had to over-exert my voice at school, was having trouble breathing well in congestion and humidity while there was no electricity at the house, and the stress of this ill-health collided with the stress of the past couple of weeks. Pastor and Madame Rose sat with me on the floor of my bedroom as Beverly searched for my anxiety prescription and tried to contact my parents while I panted with head between my knees.
They all prayed over me, stroked my head, loved me through my weakness.
The next day we went to a clinic in Gressier, and an American doctor who’s worked long in Haiti examined me. He listened to my chest and heard nothing amiss. He asked the usual questions.
“You seem really upset to me,” he said.
Beverly told him about the panic attack.
He nodded and affirmed that the problem was mostly emotional, a cold exacerbated by stress.
Before we left he prayed over us, telling us to return if ever we needed, and to take care because “we don’t want missionaries who are burned out.”

After we left the clinic, I felt worse.
We’d wasted time doing this, I thought. I was being dramatic and had caused a fuss. When we stopped for lunch I didn’t eat, just set my head on the table in an attempt to be insivible and tried to stem the irrepressible tears and mucus.
On the car ride back to the house, I scrunched up in the backseat. For a while I slept, dozed undisturbed.

When I properly woke up we were almost back to Ti Goave. Pastor drove (irrationally) fast through Gran Goave then proceeded up the mountain. Soon we were cresting that glorious point where the Ti Goave bay opens before us, the mountains pressing into the sea and the verdant valley spread to the left.
I decided there was no time for this, for this stress, for this depression, for this sickness.
“Okay, God,” I prayed. “I don’t have time for this nonsense. I have students who need me, people who depend on me, and people who have sacrificed for me to be here.”
Looking out at the lush semi-jungle of our province, I repeated Beverly’s words.
“I’m not going to let the Enemy steal my joy.”
So I didn’t.
When we reached Pastor’s house I smiled. I didn’t feel great—my throat was still scratchy, I coughed and I was quite tired out, but I was cheerful. I was happy to be there, happy to see everyone in that chaotic, buzzing household ever filled with family, workers, guests expected and unidentified, scooters, basketballs, laundry and dishes.
I was eager to take off again because we were scheduled to visit Madame Eunide, mother of the beautiful twin girls. It was Wednesday and we had milk to deliver to her home. I wanted to see those babies. I wanted to hold them.
They were far more important than me, than any stresses or self-pity I was harboring.

I did hold one of the twins not long thereafter. She awoke before I picked her up, eyes wide and still blue in her brown face. Her fingers were impossibly small and her hair impossibly soft. She was utterly delightful and I easily could have cuddled her all day.

It’s easy to love.
One of my friends has said that the “more Jesus you give the more Jesus you get.” As we believe that God is Love, we also believe that the more love you give the more love you get.
Certainly I experience that here.
It’s not easy to live in Haiti. All of you dear folk supporting me in prayer and finances and donations, bless you, you are blessing me and helping me be a blessing in turn.
No, it’s not easy to live here. The smallest things become difficult: visiting the ATM, buying minutes for a phone, walking on the beach, washing dishes. It’s not for everyone either. It is hot, it is humid, it is inconvenient and often dirty and risky and uncomfortable. There is always another demand for money, always another delay, another blòk, another heartache.
But there is always another friend, another delight, another situation about which to laugh, recall and retell, another beautiful sunset and beautiful child.

Katie Davis in her book Kisses from Katie says she never wants to go a day without laughing. She wants to end each day dirty and exhausted so she just falls into bed.
I go to bed gratefully with sore feet, semi-sweaty body, aching eyes and regret that another day is closed, because it’s been delightful.

God knows what tomorrow will bring. Chaos and confusion will most likely abound once I open the door of my room, leaving behind the solace of my banana-tree windows and strip of carpet where I can sit to read, sing and pray.
But I know with blessed assurance that tomorrow will be full of joy, full of love, full of singing and laughter and opportunities to shine.
“You’re here for a reason, just like I am,” Beverly reminded me after we talked of a difficult situation that needs addressing. “Pray about it, and God will give you an opportunity. Probably sooner than you think.”

I know that I am where I am supposed to be. Thank you all so much for helping me to get here.
It’s not easy, but it’s well with my soul.

As to those agonies—we cannot end them, we cannot remedy them all. But step by step we can improve, help to improve the lives of our children and their families. They in turn can improve the lives of others.
As we talked about proper toilet usage at assembly, Beverly told the children that the President doesn’t ask to go “pee-pee” and squat over a drain.
“We may be training the next president of Haiti,” she said. “We’re keeping high expectations.”
Tomorrow we will see which little girls remember to pull up their skirts and sit on the toilet, and which little boys remember to wash their hands with soap after pulling up their belts.
Surely some will forget. But they will learn, day by day.
And through all the frustration of watching them adapt to restroom etiquette, all the satisfaction of watching them eat nutrient-packed food, thank you Manna Pack rice from Feed My Starving Children!, we will love them.
That part is easy.
“We love because He first loved us.” ~John 4:19


“As the ark of the LORD came into the City of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, and she despised him in her heart…
And David said to Michal, ‘It was before the LORD, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the LORD—and I will make merry before the LORD. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.” ~II Samuel 6:16, 21-22 ESV
“I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes” II Samuel 6:22 NIV


“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth…We love because He first loved us.” ~I John 3:17-18

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