On Stage
Wow—the past two days have felt like a year. I’ll try to remember everything that’s happened, but I’m realizing how difficult it’s going to be to put my time in Haiti into words.
First of all, Haiti is absolutely beautiful. I knew Terrier Rouge was near the coast, and the terrain is fairly flat in the town, but I did not expect to see the mountains in the distance. The environment reminds me of a combination of the three places I’ve lived: the climate of Houston, the lushness of Pennsylvania, and the mountains of southeast Arizona. I’ve been to a few Caribbean islands before, and Haiti has the most unique terrain of any island I’ve seen.
We arrived in Cap Haitien early yesterday morning and were promptly greeted by Dr. Lucien, the ophthalmologist who works in both Cap Haitien and Terrier Rouge. It was great to finally meet her! She helped us get through customs smoothly and uneventfully. I was worried about the eye medications we were transporting; my mom told me that when she came through Port au Prince with a team of physical therapists and nurses, a lot of expensive medication that they brought was thrown out because the bottles had old expiration dates, even though the medicine hadn’t expired. So I’m very thankful that all of the equipment and medicine made it through customs.
Driving out of Cap Haitien and on to Terrier Rouge was definitely eye-opening. It’s hard to believe that a place like Haiti exists only a few hours from the U.S by plane. I think there’s a huge misconception that we, as Americans, have to travel halfway around the world to see extreme poverty, but it’s really in our own backyard.
When we arrived at St. Barthelemy, I was astounded at its size. It’s like a grand, white beacon in the town, and I could immediately sense the pride that the community has for the school. At three stories tall, it’s one of the largest buildings I’ve seen in Haiti so far.
After the children’s daily meal, we got to interact with them a little bit—they are absolutely adorable! A few kids came over to see Kelly and me at first, and about 2 minutes later, they were swarming all around us. I think I had at least 5 kids latched on to me at all times. They were holding my hands, looking at my fingernails, asking “Comment t’appelle tu?” (which means “what is your name?” in French). The school administrator had said that we were “en stage” (meaning “on stage”) before we even met the children, and he couldn’t have described our first meeting with them more accurately. With 20 sets of eyes looking up at me, I totally forgot at first that they speak some French, but then I tried to speak with them a little. Hopefully my years of high school French will come back to me—I knew I took it for a reason!
Speaking of names, my name has put me in a funny situation, as “Jocelyn” is a male name in French. Several people I’ve been emailing thought I was a man! So for the next two months, I’m going by “Jo (sounds like Joe with a soft J)-ce-line” to make my name more feminine. For the first time in my life, people can actually pronounce/understand my name—it’s great! We’ve met so many people at the school already and everyone has such interesting names.
After lunch, we met our translator, and he invited us to his house to meet his wife. They were so welcoming and gracious. We continued to walk around town for a while, and saw a crowd of people returning from a funeral. Our translator said that a young woman, only 26 years old, had passed away suddenly. Some of the kids were wearing white at school because they were mourning their family member’s death.
Today, I woke up to the rooster (no joke) outside of our window. Kelly and I have already named him Maurice. Contrary to popular belief, roosters do not only crow in the morning, but pretty much all night too. Bring it on, Maurice.
We first met the local education inspectors (the “inspectrice” and “inspecteur”… the French version of the word sounds much cooler), and we found out that the 6th graders have to take exit exams before the end of the year. We’re not sure if these exams are used just to gauge the students’ knowledge, or to decide who continues on to secondary education, but the 6th grade class we observed was hard at work to prepare for the test.
The school director took us around to meet all of the teachers in their classrooms, and I was amazed at how disciplined the kids were. I’m pretty sure a room filled with 40 American 3-year-olds would not be nearly as calm and behaved as the room we saw. When we walked into the upper-level classes, the students stood up and said “Bonjour” in unison, and some classes even sang a little song that went something like: “Bienvenue à vous, nous sommes heureux que vous êtes ici” (something like, welcome, we are happy that you’re here).
After lunch, we played jump rope with the kids for a while, which felt much more natural than staring at each other and smiling.
We also watched the music class practice a song on their recorders for a few minutes. The teacher was very serious and focused, and the students both sang and played the song written on the board. I could totally see my sister Claudia, who is a music education and voice major, up in front of the room, singing and pointing at the music 🙂
The pace around here is much slower than the usual frantic American pace, so I’m still adjusting and accepting the fact that what we aim to accomplish in a day and what we actually accomplish might be very different. It’s funny how much the weather affects me—being motivated to work is much harder in the mid-day heat, compared to the afternoon and evening coolness. I’m currently sitting on our porch, watching the huge thunderclouds and lightning in the distance. I couldn’t ask for a better blogging spot!
Kelly and I have begun to plan our first lesson for tomorrow, and we’re hoping to review Tiffany and Meagan’s lessons as well as include some new concepts. Tomorrow will probably be a much greater learning experience for me than the students!