Dishes are Therapy: Thank God for Food

Madame Missoule told me she could wash the dishes.

The students were all gone; she’d finished serving and could resume her dish-washing duties. I could return to class. I was a teacher, after all.

But if I returned to class the tears would come.

Washing dishes was therapy. It kept the tears at bay and gave me some extra minutes to pray, to thank God for what He’d given us and disregard the lack.

Lentz started it.

The first time I remember was in Recreation.

Michelet sent him out because he was crying. He didn’t want to play because his stomach hurt.

 “What’s the matter? Poukisa ou kriye? Sa ou gen, bebe?” I asked.

« Vent fè mal, » he confirmed. « My stomach hurts . »

As we don’t treat stomachaches I told him automatically to drink water. “Bwe dlo.”

But as this is a school of children unable to afford school, full of children who walk from shack wood and tin homes, who sleep with their families in one cramped room, who have never used a toilet before attending—as this is Haiti, the land of preventable tragedy—I also asked the necessary question.

“Did you eat today? Ou te mange nan kay ou? Ou te mange maten-an ? »

Lentz said no.

« Eske ou grangou ? Are you hungry ?”

He nodded his head, gazing at me with those large eyes fringed by beautiful thick lashes, then dripping with tears.

“Ou vle mange? Do you want to eat?”

He nodded again.

So I bade him sit down on one of the benches around the kitchen and fetched him a plate of rice. Our class eats after Recreation so he wouldn’t have had long to wait, but I couldn’t ignore hunger that caused a stomachache that overcame the desire to play.

Lentz ate quietly on the bench then returned to Recreation in the next room.

When I next checked in he was laughing and playing with all the rest.

After Recreation was finished the class lined up to wash hands, sweating and panting and inevitably pushing. Lentz washed and received his allotted food and ate his plate of rice and beans in class.

From then on I kept an eye on Lentz. If he began to cry in class, putting his head down on the desk, my first assumption was discomfort from hunger.

I took to sending he and Shemaly to the office in the morning for extra crackers.

Beverly told me Maman Lentz doesn’t have food at home. Actually, they don’t really have a home. They stay where they can when they can.

Manman is young.

Every morning she is at the gate, lingering on the neighboring store’s porch, chatting with Michelet and Manman Shemaly. I wonder how she spends her days.

Shemaly is one of the brightest students in the class. She can read well in all three languages and is dependable. She works more slowly than the two leading girls, but she is good-natured and sweet and tries her best. She is good about self-correcting.

Her manman doesn’t have food at home, either.

For a few weeks I called Lentz and Shemaly out after the morning cracker with peanut butter. I sent them down to the office to ask for more, after confirming that they’d had no food at home that morning.

They’d return after a few minutes and settle back down at their desks.

Madame Alice noticed and one day commented.

“Ou renmen Lentz!” she said as I handed one of the precious extra peanut-butter dolloped crackers to Lentz before waving the empty plate before the class (it’s finished!)

I smiled and answered her in a low voice with a shrug.

“Li pa gen manje nan kay li. Li e Shemaly toujou grangou.”

She nodded and gave her customary “Dako, okay” response.

She didn’t comment on favoritism again.

Usually we have a few extra crackers on the plate.

From my experience of “making” the crackers—dolloping peanut butter—I know keeping track of the numbers is difficult.

I would have to restart my count several times and still be unsure of the number of crackers layering the tin plate. The largest class is 28 students, and ours is smallest with only 19. But we have the oldest students: students who should require more food.

Giving out those extra crackers is one of the worst parts of the job.

I hate to choose who will be blessed and who goes without.

Some of the children bring snacks from home. Some come with juice or milk boxes. Some come with plastic containers of macaroni, meat, paté, or fried banana. Many come with snack crackers “bonbon” which they pour directly into their mouths as the crackers have crumbled.

Some of them, like Lentz and Shemaly, do not bring anything from home. There is nothing to bring.

Last week we couldn’t teach. Many students couldn’t focus. They were too hungry.

Thanks to Madame Beverly’s daily question of “Are you hungry?” and required response of “Yes, I am hungry,” or “No, I am not hungry,” before they exit the kitchen with their allotted plate, the students can tell us in English their bellies are empty.

This day, several did.

Sometimes they look sad, mouths turned down and faces hidden on crossed arms, like Lentz and Ludgie. Sometimes they’re vacant, staring idly or unable to read the work before them, like Saloubens and John Theodore. Sometimes they’re angry or cranky, saying “Don’t touch me,” like Tchialensky and Gilberto.

That morning I kept repeating the mandate of “Drink water, bwe dlo” attempting to explain, in Creole, that water helps an empty stomach. Water can help to appease that demanding stomach. But even the ones who heeded me, believing those ludicrous words, couldn’t overcome the hunger to work well.

Students who normally work just fine through the morning, who don’t complain of hunger pangs, even those were pleading.

“I’m very, very hungry,” Ludgie said.

“I want a cracker, please,” Gilberto said, then amended to “I want some rice, please.”

The time crept toward 11:00 and I was at a loss. I was spending an inordinate amount of time repeating the command to drink water, encouraging with backrubs, and not enough time teaching.

At 10:50 I went downstairs with the empty cracker plate, entered the office and took the cracker container off the shelf. Then I stood in the middle of the floor, lost.

What should I do? Spread peanut butter on fifteen crackers and bring them upstairs?

I turned for the hallway and met Beverly coming out of the Recreation room.

“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, lifting my helpless hands in the air. “There are so many of them who are hungry and just can’t work today. So many. Many more than usual.”

Beverly nodded. “You know what that means? They’re about to go through a growth-spurt.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

Beverly turned and called Madame Rose, who was supervising the feeding of the five-year old class who’d just left Recreation. Beverly explained that the children in second grade were hungry because they were growing, grandi.

“Do we give them more crackers? Or do we give them piti diri a little rice?”

Rose was decisive. “Rice. And later, more.”

Beverly nodded. “Yes, and we explain that this is a snack. They’ll eat more after Recreation.”

Madame Rose then made an about-face into the kitchen and commenced scooping a ladle of rice on eleven plates. Adrianna and I balanced the stacks and toted them upstairs.

Outside the classroom I peered around the doorframe. We had 11 plates and 19 students. Not all of them needed this offering.

I summoned Madame Alice from her surveilling.

“Ki moun bezwen manje kounya?” I asked. “Who needs food now?”

We looked into the classroom.

“Shemaly. Theodore. Lentz. Lovenita….” She shrugged. “Tout moun bezwen. Everyone needs it.”

“Okay,” I said, and we entered with the plates.

It was the first time since before the cholera scare we didn’t wash hands before eating. We just set plates down before children and let them scoop up rice as rapidly as possible.

We had to return for perhaps two more plates but a few students rejected the plate. A few opted to eat snacks from their bags, under instruction they should not eat much now.

“Manje piti paske nou ale recreacion. Pa bon pou manje two e fè exercise! It’s not good to eat too much before exercise!” I instructed, helping Shawn choose a few morsels from his lunch container and then stow it back in his bag.

It was rapid fire—that pre-Recreation “snack.”

We stacked the scraped plates and the students resumed their Creole grammar work.

By this time it was 11:15 and they had fifteen minutes to digest that bit before jumping and running and dancing with that unlimited youthful verve.

For most of them the food interfered not at all with their ability to leap and frolic—because it was the first food of the day and was immediately devoured by needy metabolisms.

Dancing commenced in Recreation a short while later to cheery students. They love dancing.

Before they began, Madame Beverly called upon those who had been hungry to stand in a line.

“Gade, Madame Rose,” she said. “Look and see who it is who’s hungry.”

The majority of the class formed a line, wondering why they were on display.

“You see?” Beverly nudged Rose. “See who it is?”

Madame Rose nodded. “Yes, I know.”

Many of the students standing on that line were ones whose homes Madame Beverly and Madame Rose knew well: the kind of homes that make Madame Rose shake her head and Madame Beverly turn to God in anger. The kind of homes that might have been acceptable in the 19^th century. The kind of homes like forts children build of scraps, before returning to their solid, insulated, secure homes of loving comfort.

The Madames nodded their understanding, nods of regrettable acceptance. Then the students broke up into mingled lines and the music began to play. With the usual buoyancy and contagious laughter they danced, showing off their progress in the Chicken Dance and Macarena.

I laughed and smiled and danced too, knowing that this physical therapy was a daily necessity, as is the dawn devotion on the rooftop, watching the sun rise while reading the Bible and praying—but as I frolicked, watching Ludgie swing her hips and sway with brilliant diamond smile alighting her ebony dark face, watching Saloubens kick his pointy-shoed feet with vigor, I couldn’t help but think of what they were missing.

“Thank you, God, for their ignorance. Thank you that this is all they know,” I said in my crumbling heart. “Thank you for their joy.”

After one dance I exited Recreation and stepped into the kitchen to wash the dishes my class had made. Madame Missoule, the cook, was occupied scooping portions onto first graders’ plates, and I began washing.

Dishes are therapy.

In days past I would retreat to the woods to walk off emotions—to appease stress, release anger, to sob out sadness under comforting, sheltering branches. I would pour out my heart among the roots and stay out until I’d exhausted body and eased the heartache.

Even in Korea I could walk or run out those emotions, barreling down a sidewalk with headphones in or following the river, or trekking into the woods, losing myself on a dirt path passing azalea bushes and memorials.

Here in Haiti life is more confined. Often I have no option to venture out, walking or running in solitude. I can retreat to my room or the roof, and I can work.

Dishes are constant here, with so many folks in the house. Dishes are simple. They’re predictable, mindless and sometimes tiring. Do enough dishes, certainly scrub enough pots, and you’ll be worn out.

That morning I washed all the plates for my class, all the spoons, too. Then I started washing the first graders’ dishes as they returned to the kitchen, smiling wanly at my students as they entered, sweaty and glowing from Recreation.

They got their second serving and marched out eager to eat again. I kept washing.

When the crowd had gone, the line diminished and all students back to their classrooms, Missoule sat herself down on a bench by the door and called to me.

Jonas helped her communicate with my faulty Creole.

“You can stop now. All the students are gone and she can wash,” Jonas said.

“I want to wash,” I answered, dunking plates into the bleach water. “If I wash I won’t cry.”

You’re probably able to figure out why I was repressing tears. You’re probably sitting there in your comfortable home, well-fed and enjoying certain holiday gluttonies like gingerbread men, pecan pie, whoopee pies, eggnog, a Starbucks peppermint latte, Grandma’s fudge…we all have our food vices.

The children in our school don’t have those. Sure, they enjoy candy and cookies. They’ll ask for lollipops when they see Madame Beverly has given them as rewards for English class or Recreation competition. They’ll try to share a friend’s bonbon. Most of them probably love pate.

But they don’t know homemade cookies. Some of them know nothing homemade, save rice and beans on a good day.

They know hunger. They know fatigue from empty bellies. They know eating that first serving quickly so they can return to the kitchen first and secure the second helping before the food runs out.

Second grade is the last class served, and by the time they’ve eaten once, the pot is nearly empty. There’s usually a race to return and offer the plate again—and then an exercise in scraping the bottom of the pot for the remnants of rice and beans.

Gilberto is quite small. He’s petite all around, including his baby teeth that smile so charmingly. Beneche is bigger with a round, dark head and secretive smile. Both of them always request large servings, and both usually return for seconds.

That midday meal may be the only one for the day.

Watching these seven-year olds undertake heaping plates of rice, you wonder where they can fit so much food. But then you remember how much food other seven-year olds you know eat through the day. They eat before school, they eat snacks in the morning, they eat lunch, they eat another snack in the afternoon, they eat dinner, and they probably eat a snack before bedtime. They drink water, juice and milk all day. They may not like to but they have fruit and vegetables to eat. They have meat and cheese and yogurt. They get protein, calcium, vitamins, and minerals.

They have regular doctors’ appointments, school nurses, guidance counselors, and worrisome grandparents who fuss after their health, who insist they eat more. Their families celebrate holidays featuring traditional food. They attend parties stocked with treats.

Our students do not.

I don’t want you to feel sorry for them. Do not harbor pity in your hearts. Do not consider them the world’s lowly unfortunates.

God has blessed these children with joy abundant.

Of one, Madame Beverly says, “God has given him the gift of not recognizing his reality.”

I agree. Blissful ignorance is personified in many of our students.

But you should be angry. You should be outraged that in a fertile world where crops of all kinds are cultivated, where fruits of immeasurable value and exquisite taste flourish, where restaurants and school cafeterias and overfed children toss away uneaten food en masse—you should be outraged that there are children going hungry.

That there are children who come to school with naught in their stomachs, who cry at their desk from stomach pain, who nod off during lesson, who race for second helpings to tide them over until tomorrow.

You should cry for the children who dread school vacation because it removes them from the only safe environment they have ever known, keeps them from toilets, clean water, hugs, affection, praise, and food.

I do.

Yes, I know hunger is a world epidemic. I know that near your own neighborhood are folks struggling and deciding between electricity and groceries. I thank God for Feed My Starving Children which enables us to have food. While washing dishes and blinking back tears I praised God again that we had food to give these hungry children.

Let us be continuously grateful every time we sit down to eat. Whether the food is your favorite, that special homemade tradition, or whether the food is merely for survival, lacking taste or appeal. Let us be grateful, and let us never feel entitled.

Sure, everyone should be guaranteed food. Everyone should be guaranteed nourishment and nurturing, a safe place to sleep and a hygienic bathroom.

But not everyone is.

Maybe you need to take a break now. Go for a walk. Put on your headphones. Take a drive. Wash some dishes. As you do, pray. Pray for wisdom to help feed the starving children. And say thank you for what you’ve eaten today.

And it’s okay, you can let the tears come.