St. Andrew's School- Haiti- 2014

Sunday March 2nd

...Bfast, Church, Bananagrams...

Did you know that the 1.5 million that the Haitian lottery amasses

every year, that is equal to more of all the money coming into Haiti

from Haitians living outside of the country.

This morning we woke up at about 7:00 which was pretty difficult

after a long day yesterday. It was sunny outside with a light breeze

and the air was fresh. Madame told us that she woke up early and

watched the sunrise and Liam and Bear took an early walk with some

people from the village. Sunny had prepared a delicious breakfast of

boiled eggs, fresh mango and grapefruit, and bread with peanut butter

and jam. We all ranted and raved about the peanut butter, as it tasted

infinitely better than American peanut butter. At the beginning of the

trip, Bear told us to both recognize the problems here, but also

recognize the beauty and joy of this place. Between the morning

conversations, the beautiful weather and the delicious food, this

place is beginning to feel a lot like paradise.

After breakfast, Bear and Liam headed off to Catholic mass and the

rest of us headed to the church right in the village for the mass that

Jacques was leading. It is this small building with about ten long

benches that the whole village packs into. I've realized that my

understanding of french does not translate to Creole as much as I

thought it would, but, nevertheless, despite not being able to

understand what was being said as mass today, it was incredibly

moving. There was so much love, spirit, and joy filling the entire

church. We were asked to stand up and speak about why we were in

LaFond and, more specifically, why we were in the church. Jacques

translated for us, and our words were met with claps and smiles. We

expressed our instantaneous love of the people here, our desire to do

whatever we can to help, our thanks for everything they have already

done for us, and our appreciation for the sheer beauty of LaFond. Mr

Hutchinson also got up to the Pulpit and his words, again, were met

with many "Amens" and smiles. By the end we were all singing and

clapping despite the fact that we had no clue what we were saying. As

the mass ended, we shook hands with everyone in the church, with all

of us saying  "Bonjour" and "Merci" and asking everyone their names.

We then sat right outside the church overlooking the mountain with

many of the kids, and they took pictures with our cameras and wrote

their names in our journals.

What was difficult about this moment, however, was that the boys and

girls were asking us for our journals and for our cameras. This was

uncomfortable, because our first instinct was, inevitably, to give our

things away. However, despite how difficult it is in the moment to say

"No, je suis desolé", we've learned over the past few days that we

have to encourage the children to both give and take. I've learned

from reading Paul Farmer's book, "To Repair the World", about the

ethic of "accompayment", or, in other words, to supply those around us

with the tools to provide for themselves. When we were on our way to

Petit Goave, Jacques gave these three boys who came up to our car

window a few snacks, so I gave them a water bottle. I thought this was

alright, that this would be enough for them, but for the next ten

minutes one of the boys followed our car asking for more. When we're

driving in the car we see all of these situations that we crave to

repair, but we just drive past. It feels like second nature,

therefore, to give them at least something because we don't have the

time to "accompany" them, or work with them. I think this is something

we are all trying to work through as our trip develops and as we think

about our community service efforts at home.

After church, we came back to our camp and were greeted with a

beautifully prepared lunch. Sunny had made us swirly pastries filled

with vegetables in a red sauce. They were delicious. He has this tiny,

little kitchen he works in and he manages to prepare this breathtaking

meals. We've realized that this must mean he really adores what he

does. Everytime we eat, a couple children hover at the edge of our

camp. This is an incredibly strange sensation because we know all they

want is some food. Thankfully today we had leftovers so we made them

sandwiches and gave them the rest of the food Sunny prepared.

After this we played a leadership game led by Chris. We created two

boundaries and the objective was to get from one side to the other,

with the space between as a metaphorical river. We had seven pieces of

paper that served as rocks, but these 'rocks' or pieces of paper were

taken away if we let go of them. This was intially difficult, as we

jumped right into it instead of consulting each other and creating a

game plan. We made it across, but upon reflection, we realized that

this game can serve as a metaphor for the service project we are about

to start. We know that if we try to move forward without making a game

plan and making sure everyone is on the same page, our project can

suffer. This was also a really perfect example of all of our

leadership styles, whether we are at the front vocally leading or

staying behind or even leading by example.

After the game, we spent about an hour teaching all the children that

had gathered how to play both tag and UNO. This was an incredible

experience. They all caught on really fast and we learned really

quickly that despite the language barrier there are so many

commonalities that exist between us like a love for laughter and

games. In the spirit of moving around, Delilah, Hutch, Liam and I

decided to go on a run. Despite having trained all winter for a half

marathon, this run was extremely challenging. We ran down almost

vertcal hills filled with rocks and then right back up them which was,

if not equally challenging, maybe even more so. It was almost like a

Forest Gump experience, as we realized very quickly into the run that

there were girls and boys running right behind us. We were greeted

everywhere we went and while they seemed happy to see us. After

trekking up the last hill, we saw that everyone had begun to play

soccer and after a relatively quick, but delicious dinner, we joined

in.

Now we are sitting around the table drinking tea and reflecting.

These conversations are always filled with laughter, stories, and

honesty. It's a perfect time to get to know each other and learn as

much as possible from each other.

Bridget DuFour

To our dear family and friends-

We hope you are all doing well back home and we miss you all very

much. In these moments of reflection, it is quite difficult for me to

encapsulte all the varrying emotions I am experiencing. While I and

the group have indeed witnessed some things that were difficult to

see, experience, and understand, the number of moments where I have

felt a sense of overflowing happiness and bliss on the trip thus far

has been many. The natural beauty, the beautiful souls of the LaFond

community, our group dynamic, our fearless and inspirational leaders

Madame Johnson, Mr. Hutchinson, Chris our WLS coordinator, Bear (our

given nickname) and Jacques our onsite leaders, and the INCREDIBLE

culinary genious that is Sunni our chef, have made the past three days

(boy, has it only been three days?!) enough enrichment and memories to

last a life time. Though after what we experienced I feel I can be

joined by my travel-mates in saying that our newfound desire for

similar experiences will never be quite satisfied.

Today was a full and incredible day. As we headed down the hill from

our campsite to the church, I did not quite expext the experience our

group was about to receive. The church was no bigger than an average

medium to large sized classroom with walls appearing to be thin slabs

of pavement/stones cemented together. There are two square openings on

either side of the church serving as windows, and the entrance into

the church is a rectangular opening with no door. During the service

when looking out the windows and door, we saw mountains ridded with

green and a bright blue sky full of clouds.

The service itself was a bit indescribable but I will attempt to

capture its beauty and uniqueness. The preachers spoke with so much

power, passion, and hope...it was spine tingling. The songs were the

most expressive, as everyone sang with heart and conviction. Some

swayed with their eyes closed and their hands in the air, others

clapped their hands and tapped their feet with the rythem of the

songs. We Americans attempted our best to follow along in song, some

better than others...I mainly just tried to clap my hands as loudly as

possible and sing some random noises that I thought I was hearing, I

felt badly for Bridget who was next to me! The songs incited so much

hope and love that you could practically feel, taste, hear, and see it

circulating around-it was such a magical thing. I felt as if every

inch of my skin was buzzing with excitement and unfiltered happiness

at the beauty of the happiness yet pain, pain yet hope, behind the

songs and people. It was amazing to think that this holy place was

created without many resources, supplies or space. This of course is

all an outside view. While I do feel as if I am trying to absorb as

much as possible, it can be at times difficult to see a much more

simplistic lifestyle and also frustrating that we don't exactly know

the intimate details of these people's daily lives as we desire to

help and make their living situations better. Despite these feelings,

Madame has rightly told us to try to refrain from making assumptions

just based on this outside view we see. After the service ended, we

shook hands with everyone (which was so lovely) and went outside where

we interacted with some of the children for a bit. Looking around at

the rolling mountains and patches of green and brown, feeling the cool

breeze, seeing the interactions of my peers and the children: Michelle

chasing Bebe trying to get him to be in a picture with her, Bridget

with 5 or more little children around and enchanted by her, and Liam

trying to communicate with a local boy was almost too much to handle.

I looked at Madame beside me and she just understood, I tried to get

some words out explaining how I felt and she just shook her head in

that we didn't really need to talk, she was feeling the same way. In

that moment It was so unbelievably comforting for me to be able to

share this experience with all of these incredible people.

Upon returning to the campsite and to Sunni's beautiful meal, we

played Uno and soccer with some of the local children for the next few

hours. As Bridget mentioned, the run that the four of us went on was

probably the hardest yet most fun run ever. It felt, as she said, that

we were in a scene of Forrest Gump...except with small children and

various farm animals! Running on our cross country trek around LaFond,

there were certain points when it felt as if we had the whole world in

arms reach, it was hard to believe something this beautiful exists.

After a delicious dinner when we returned from our run, many of us

played pick up soccer with some of the local kids. I was so surprised

at how good they are, especially considering the majority of them were

barefoot and we were playing on the rocky and hilliest ground. They

are blazing fast and have developed such good footskill, it was so fun

for us to be able to all play together. The rest of the night was

filled with reflection and games.

I feel so lucky to be in this place experiencing it with this group.

We miss you very much and you all are on our minds and in our hearts!

Delilah Harvey