Jedi

On Thursday there was no school because it was a holiday, Corpus Christi.  I spent the morning at Kay St. Anne. When one of the newest children, a baby probably just over a year, who was barley over the chicken pox had a very water diarrhea that consisted of small white slimy peices shaped like rice, I got scared.  These are the classic symptoms of Cholera.  She was quickly sent to the Cholera hospital, where thank God it was determined that she did not have Cholera; she was returned to Kay St. Anne later that very day.  The next day she no longer was having white watery rice like diarrhea and even smiled a bit.    

There is a child who has been staying at the homes of workers and their families until it seems unlikely that she will get chicken pox from other children at Kay Saint Ann, because she has other health issues.  When workers were changing, on Thursday, afternoon I asked to go with them so that I could see the child before I go on vacation.  With a worker and a driver I into the crowded city and past the broken cathedral and what remains of the presidential palace, up hilly roads through well populated urban neighborhoods which felt to me like a maze.  It was great to see this wonderful little girl, who should be returning to Kay Saint Anne one day later this week.  She had grown, and seemed happy.  She slept in my arms much of the way to the other worker's home.

At some point during this journey my Haitian cell phone fell from my pocket.  The driver and worker and I searched the cab of the truck where I had been sitting but could not find it anywhere.  I thought it fell out when the child exited the truck.  It did not.  The phone was found in the truck probably the following day.   Last night, a friend called my number for me and the driver answered. When he returned it to me this morning I was appreciative of how honest and helpful people are until I realized all of the money on the phone card had been used except for one half of a gourde which is worth about two cents or so.  I am glad and grateful to have the phone back.

In a few days I will be able to use my american cell phone; I am really really glad for that.

Happy Father's Day!

Just wanted to share the beauty of this tree while it is in bloom. It is near my house.     

Happy Father's Day to my dad, grandfather, uncles and all fathers.  Working with children who are not being cared for by their families increases my appreciation for own family experiences.  

Yesterday a group of children from Ste. Anne went on a picnic.  We traveled to a nearby town to property which NPH owns.  It was wonderful for the children to walk around the land.  There were magnificent mango trees which provided great shade.  They children saw goats and pigs as we hiked around a bit, jumping over small streams of water.  Then they enjoyed sandwiches and Tampico (a sugary fruit drink popular with Haitian children.)  It was truly a great outing for them.  All of the children from Ste. Anne will get a chance to go there, and the older children from Ste. Louie will all get a chance to go to a beach sometime this summer.

There is much to do in the next week and  a half or so; at this point, although I will miss the children, I do find myself  looking forward to vacation.
Have a good week!    
 
  

    

Happy Pentecost!

The week began with continued cloudiness and rain, but by the end of the week we were back to the typical sunny and hot Haiti weather.  Yesterday, I went with a sister who is a nurse to a clinic at a parish in the city.  After driving through the crowded streets, we arrived to find a large crowd of people desperate for basic medical care. There were many people, especially children with skin conditions which probably were a result of living in wet tents during the past couple of weeks.   There is the sad realization when working with people who are experiencing what seem like extreme poverty, only to find that there are people much worse off.  People are given medications to treat their infections, skin problems, and injuries and illnesses.  In reality, so many of these problems are the results of systemic injustices, because so many of these things could easily be prevented if resources were more equally distributed, if people had adequate shelter, basic nutrition, clean water. I think it is helpful for me to see the kinds of situations that many of our children probably experienced prior to coming to Kay Ste. Ann.  I wonder what does world look like when seen through the eyes of a young Haitian mother or child living in a crowded dilapidated tent in the slums of Port-a-prince?

 Yesterday evening, I went to a local parish for liturgy with two other sisters.  The liturgy was beautiful the singing, like the people was Spirit-filled.  It was a wonderful Pentecost celebration.
Many Blessings!    

Toti epi Lapli Turtle and Rain

Toti 
I use a turtle puppet for the pscycho-social-educational groups which I am doing with the kindergarten and first grade classes at the Father Wasson Angels of Light School.  Over the course of the school year, I have become closely associated with this puppet, which is called Titoti (little turtle.)  Currently I am teaching the children about different emotions.  One of the books which came with the Kreyol children's library which my relatives purchased for Christmas, is the story of a child who finds a turtle on his way to school and puts the live turtle in his pocket.  During class he sits the turtle on his shoulder which causes another child to feel so frightened that the children runs out of the classroom.  I was reading the story to talk about feeling scared and afraid.  
I don't think the young guy who helps out at the school, knew that I would be reading this particular story last week, but when he found a turtle near where he lives, he decided to bring it to me, as a gift!  Somehow it seemed oddly providential given the story that I had planned to read that very morning; and I thought that it was very thoughtful of this young man to think of me, although in all honesty I received it with a bit of ambivalence as I wondered what I would do with this creature in my play therapy/class-room, which is really a tent.

Unlike the turtle in the story, this turtle was too big to even fit in an adult size pocket or sit on even a large person's shoulder!  I decided to keep turtle for a week, so that the children could get a chance to see it and then release it; I believe that it belongs in nature.  The children have mostly been curious and delighted, although a few were afraid that it would try to bite them. I decided it is a female, as one morning when I entered my tent, which was beginning to smell a bit like the reptile house at the zoo, there was a broken egg in the container where the turtle had been placed to swim.  I spent a long time cleaning the tent yesterday and have used a lot of hand sanitizer the past several days.

One night when I was able to get internet service, I looked up care for pet turtles so that I could learn all of the things I was doing wrong while trying to care for this creature.  There was a lot of information which was not helpful as I did not know what species I had, had not bought it in an American pet store, am not even sure if they sell turtle food sticks anywhere in Haiti, but am very certain that the merchants outside the gates of the hospital don't carry them.   The internet pet turtle experts talk about indoor and outdoor arrangements for pet turtles but I was not sure what they would consider a tent. In the little story I read to the children the turtle is given little pieces of carrots and apples.  Someone who had read the book when I left it in an office to dry one day brought me apples for the turtle the next day.  I asked the woman in the kitchen for scraps of vegetables and they gave me a carrot and a cabbage leaf.  People are so generous; an assistant teacher gave me a hat with a turtle on it this week too.    

Yesterday morning, when I arrived the turtle has left the container with water and was hiding under the green plastic tent floor partly in the mud.  I did not want to disturb it since I wondered if it could be making a nest.  This morning, when I went to check on the turtle I thought perhaps she had left on her own, but then found her hiding between two layers of fabric that make up the walls of the tent.  She will soon be enjoying her freedom.                
 Lapli
Normally during the rainy season, it rains most evenings or nights sometimes quite heavily but rarely for more than an hour.  The sun is usually out and it is fairly rare to have an overcast day.  This week has been an exception.  Hurricane season began the first of June, and we have had a tropical depression all week, which has meant cloudy rainy days.  The temperature has sometimes been cooler, but the humidity sometimes seems higher than usual.  Thursday it rained almost all day; the children did not have school because of Ascension Thursday.  When all 39 children were in the house all day long because of the weather, it made me very grateful that this kind of weather is so unusual here.  The humidity was so high that day that in the course of working with the children I had sweat through my clothes so much that one little girl pointed to my damp pant leg and innocently asked me if I had peed on myself!    

The swings at Kay Ste. Ann on Thursday, notice the puddles under them.  

On the mornings at the school, when I sweep the water out of my tent and try to keep the floor clean enough that children can sit on, my heart goes out to the thousands of people who are still living in crowded tents here in Haiti.  The rain also somehow makes Cholera incidences increase as well.  Let us pray for those living in tents, for those suffering from Cholera, and for a safe hurricane season.  Know that you, my family, friends, community members, and others reading this are in my prayers too.

Cholera Continues

People in Haiti continue to get Cholera.  There is not the same energy around it as when the illness first arrived. It has been quite a long time since volunteers here who were working in other programs were asked to also help out in the Cholera tents.  Now, buildings have replaced the tents and there is sufficient Haitian staff working there.  In the past several days though I was reminded several times that the problem has not gone away.  Several days this past week, daily liturgy was a funeral mass for victims of cholera.  A couple of the bodies on the chapel floor were quite small (babies or young children.)  

At the end of last week a young child, who I think may have significant disabilities, was brought over to Kay St. Anne.  While being treated for Cholera apparently the child was abandoned.  We do not know his age, only his name.  I think he could be about three or four, since when we stand him up he is about the height of some of our children who are that age, but it is hard to tell.  Since we don't know his age it is hard to get a sense of how delayed or disabled he is.  He is pretty much non verbal, although one day when I was playing with him when he grabbed my telephone, after I said "alo" (hello) many times and held it to his ear he eventually repeated the word clearly.  He does not walk, but does scoot around on the floor a bit.  Someone is trying to find a better placement for this child, where there are lower ratios of children to adults and where staff have received training  in serving children with significant special needs.  The organization I work with has one home at the orphanage in Kenskoft for children with disabilities, but it is full and not likely to have any spaces soon; many of the "children" who were placed there because of the degree of disability are now young adults who continue to reside there as they are not able to live independently.  The organization has some out-patient programs providing services to children who have disabilities as well.  I imagine it is challenging for any family anywhere to care well for a child with a severe disability, but here in Haiti, where there is so much extreme poverty, so few resources, where even non-disabled poor children are not given the right to a free and appropriate education, and subsidies like social security disability are non existent, it is a far greater challenge.  A family who abandons such a child may believe that an organization that can run a hospital must have access to resources to care for the child in a way that the family can't. While this Haitian child who likely has significant disabilities who was abandoned in a Cholera camp,  seems to have so much going against him in life; I must say his smile is brighter and more frequent than the smiles of most people I know.           

Today is Mother's Day in Haiti; so, Happy Mother's Day again.  I am also aware that it is Memorial Day weekend in the states, so Happy Memorial Day, too.  I always think of Memorial weekend as the beginning of the summer season.  In Haiti it always feels like summer; the past week or so has felt to me like an August heat wave, although fortunately it is not so very hot here today.  

A month from now, I will be heading home for Erin (my younger sister's) wedding, followed by vacation, provincial chapter and retreat.  I look forward to catching up with family and friends. 

      

Chicken Pox, Fet Drapo, and New Arrivals

When we had only a handful of children left at Kay Ste. Anne who did not have the chicken pox and all of the other children who were sick including some of the youngest ones, were in the containers at Kay Ste. Louie, it was decided that all of the children should just return to Kay Ste. Anne.  I suspect some of the children who did not get chicken pox may have had it when they were younger.  One child is still away, due to other health problems; it was decided to keep her away from the other children, until the chicken pox are gone.  When the children are itchy and terribly uncomfortable the workers turn on the hose and water the children, which does seem to provide relief for a while. 

On Tuesday the school had a celebration for Fet Drapo (flag day.)  A group of talented musicians came with trumpets, a trombone and drums and led most of the children in a parade around a few nearby blocks.  The younger children stayed behind and danced and played.  Wednesday was the offical Hatian Flag Day.  Schools were closed for the holdiay.  I spent the day at Kay Ste. Anne mostly attendingn to sick children, and organizing some activities for those that were up to it.  The workers turned on the generator and the television and the children watched a program of flag day festitvites which was occuring live somehere in Haiti. Haitian music and dance is reallly beautiful. 

The Haitian people really do take pride in their flag and in their history and in their culture.  I think I can respect that such days are importnat to them and even enjoyed wishing people "Bon Fet Drapo,"  even though, for me something like Flag Day in the United States is not particularrly important. Although thinking about it did spark a memory for me. In all my  life, I only remember ever doing anything to celebrate Flag Day in the United States one time; that was when I was in second grade and the entire elementary school walked to Narragansett Pier (the center of town) singining patriotic songs (we practiced so much that to this day, whenever I hear the song America the Beautiful finish, in my head I start singning You're a Grand Old Flag.) 

On Thursday we had five new children move into Kay Ste. Anne. One new little girl, problaby under two sat silently eating her lunch while tears rolled down her face.  It is so hard for me to imagine what it must be like for these children when they first arrive.  At times, I tend to wish there were fewer children in the home, because I tend to beleive that it is hard for staff to meet their emotional needs well when there are so many.  As each new child comes, I find that they are such delightful individuals, I can't help but love them. Often I need to remind myself that this situaiton, is probably much better in many ways from the situations they are coming from. 

 Please excuse spelling errors, I am using a different computer that is not my own, and it seems to be set to spell check in French.  Thanks.

chicken pox and ti krapo (little frog)

The current challenge here is that several of the children in our program have, or recently have had chicken pox, and it seems likely more will get it.  At least in my mind chicken pox seems like a normal childhood illness that children typically recover from without problem, unlike other illness children in Haiti often get.  Once the children are diagnosed with it they are staying in one container at St. Louie to avoid contact with others.  The children do seem to handle these things fairly well.

On a lighter note, the other morning when I was almost awake, trying to recall my dreams before opening my eyes and beginning the day, I suddenly felt something land on me.  I yelped and jumped up immediately at which point I noticed a frog sitting on the floor next to my bed, which is where he landed when I sprang to my feet.  At seeing this little creature I laughed out loud.  I think it is some kind of a tree frog; they are pretty common around here.  These frogs amaze me with their ability to climb walls and to jump great distances for such little animals.  Sometimes you see them sitting very still for a long time waiting for a bug to go by.  This frog however was not very still; I think that is why I liked him and was quickly able to forgive him for getting me out of bed a couple minutes earlier than usual.  Since the internal walls in our home do not go all the way up the ceiling this frog was able to scale the wall a few times while I was getting ready for work, eating breakfast and praying.  When I was ready to leave for the day, the frog was by the door.  I opened it and gently guided the frog out.  While I don't mind an occasional little frog or small lizard in the house since they eat bugs, I prefer them not be on my bed most especially while I am in it! I was glad the frog left since the woman I share a house with was staying home because she was ill  that day and I was not sure if she would appreciate a frog landing on her resting body.

In national news the new president was inaugurated yesterday. I received an email from the professor of Creole I had in Miami last summer with a link to an article/letter he wrote encouraging the president to use Creole, the language of the people rather than French which many Haitians not fortunate enough to have been well educated can not really understand.   It is of course written in Creole, I decided to include the link if anyone is interested:
 http://www.alterpresse.org/spip?page=kr     

Have a good week.  Watch out for jumping frogs!
Take care.  

Here is the frog as it is climbing the wall of the bedroom.  A view of the face would have been more flattering perhaps, but this frog was just not sitting still! 

Happy Mother's Day to my mother, grandmothers, aunts, and all mothers and mother figures.

Today I was a God mother.  Well, in this program our children's sponsors, (generous people in the US and Europe who agree to send regular payments to help our children who are assigned a child to sponsor,) are often referred to as God parents.  Today though since those God parents do not come, I was considered a Maren (God mother.)  I had the privilege of holding a child in my arms arms, a child who needs assistance to walk because of a physical disability, while he was baptized.  He is a grateful young child with a beautiful smile.  The children were all dressed up, girls in while dresses, and the boys from St. Louie all had little bow ties.  Several truckloads, and small bus trips took the children, some of their family members and workers to a parish church about a half an hour away.  Many children were baptized, and some of the children from St. Louie received first communion,  some even received both sacraments today.  It was a long, (especially for the toddlers) liturgy, but a beautiful one.  The children were attentive and seemed to understand the importance of the day, except for the toddlers, who were very well behaved for toddlers.
Afterwards everyone returned to St. Louie for a fet (party.)  It was fun.  The children and family members who came really seemed to enjoy themselves.  My job was cutting the large, beautiful cake into a couple hundred pieces for all of the children, guests and workers.
It was a good day.  I hope you had a good one as well.      

Storm and norm

On Thursday, as I was on my way home from work, suddenly a very bad thunderstorm, with unusually strong winds arrived.  I was in a tap-tap with a co-worker, and I called my supervisor asking her, to meet me where I get off the tap-tap, so that I would not have to walk even the short distance home.  Just running quickly from one vehicle to the other I got drenched and most of the contents in my back pack were at least damp too.  When I arrived at my little house, I put towels on the floor to soak up the water that had come in, mostly from under the front door.  

When I arrived at the school the next morning, a few of the tents that are used as classrooms had blown down almost completely.  Workers had moved benches from the classrooms to a space near the containers that has a roof over it, so the children would be in the shade. Classes resumed normally.  There was too much water on the floor of the tent I use for my groups, so I found a different place to work.  In between groups I swept the floor, and by the end of the day it was dried out so I was able to use it for a therapy appointment I had with a child.  Assistant teachers and other workers, worked all day to reassemble the tents that are used as classrooms.  When such things happen people do what they need to do and keep going.  Here, in Haiti, there are still so many people who are living in tents.  Tents of course are not designed to be lived in for long periods of time.  I am sure many of those were blown down or flooded with water.     

 

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go for a long scenic ride to a clinic in a rural area.  As we passed dwelling places without electricity or running water, people working the land with simple tools, women selling fruits and vegetables in crowded marketplaces, I thought for most of history and even now in many places most people have lived more like this than how we in the United States live today.  Sometimes I forget this, and act as though having so many comforts and conveniences is the norm, rather than the exception.      

This week I also began to help prepare some of the children at St. Anne for baptism; I am at least helping the older ones to understand what it means and what to expect.  Next Sunday many children in the program will receive sacraments.

Please excuse my slow response to emails and things, the internet has been unreliable, but I am very grateful it is working quite well at the moment!  

Have a good week.  

Take care, 

Kathleen 

Happy Easter!

Recently, I was asked to incorporate some religious education into what I am doing with the children at St. Anne.  I began doing this on Holy Thursday, meeting with small groups of the children telling them the story of these holy days.  When I spoke of Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, in order to make it a little more concrete for them, I decided to wash their feet.  When I was nearly finished with the first group, a child asked to wash mine; I was very touched by this gesture of such a young child.

On Good Friday I went with another sister to liturgy at the local parish since we were not having mass at the little chapel here on the grounds of St. Damien Hospital.  We found seats in the church. There were also some people sitting outside in plastic chairs, who could here the liturgy.  I had not realized how many people were present until the veneration of the cross when so many of varying ages, and probably different classes processed into the church to kiss the cross.  This went on for nearly an hour, while people sang beautifully and solemnly.  There is such great faith among the people here, many of whom have experienced Good Friday suffering throughout their lives.

On Easter Sunday there was mass at St. Louie.  In the evening volunteers gathered for a party and spaghetti dinner.  It always a gift to celebrate with people.

Hopefully you had a Happy Easter as well, and will experience Easter joy everyday!