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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