Jim: An Inspiring Meeting

 It's Monday morning.  We've seen the flag raising, visited classes, spoken Spanish with the older kids in their Spanish classes, and gone crazy with the little kids in the schoolyard --Johnny does a jumping game with them and gets them all worked up.  Adam started with that, then took to enticing them to chase him around the yard.  He spread his arms ahd flew, dodging giggling kids, then picked them up and made them fly in spinning circles when they caught up with him.

What I want to write about, though, is yesterday, late afternoon, when we got back from our wonderful tour of the south of Hinche, led by our friend James, and I got to sit in on the meeting of the Youth Association.  I felt like I was in a liberation theology base community meeting.  About forty-five minutes into my time there, Father Walin leaned over to me and told me they were talking about the upcoming election.  They had dragged some of the benches from the little kids' classrooms out into the open schoolyard.  There were 23 young folks, plus Walin and Jorge and me.  14 of the kids were older boys, say from 17 to 19 or 20.  They are eligible to vote at 18, so a bunch of them are anticipating their first vote.  What floored me was how intense the discussion was, how long each kid spoke, and how much they seemed to care about the issues they were discussing.  One older boy in a white T-shirt and jeans, a Haitian James Dean, held forth for a long time, sometimes looking very pained as he spoke, telling his story with great feeling.

Every so often Walin would respond to one of them and speak for a few minutes, taking them very seriously.  The quality of the listening by everyone there was amazing.

Over the schoolyard wall, in the eastern sky, two plastic kites appeared, then four, dancing above the palm and mango trees.  I thought of Gerry Straub's film about Haiti, "Mud Pies and Kites," with mud pies being the symbol of suffering and dire poverty, kites being his metaphor for hope.  As the sun set, and the darkness descended, making invisible the faces of the speakers, they carried on the discussion, becoming as a group my personal symbol of conviction, commitment, and hope.

After the meeting, over dinner, Walin told me that a couple of the older guys were graduates from St. Andres and now studying in Port-au-Prince.  They were just home for the weekend, and coming back to hang with their pals.  The sense of community and compassion I got was very striking to me.  Walin said he tried not to get into the personalities of the two remaining presidential candidates, or to influence the kids on how to vote, but rather to impress principles on them that might help them make up their own minds.

I find myself increasingly committed to learning Creole (and maybe taking on some French, too! -- Charles Warlick and Lisa Hallee, beware!).  I could get the vibe, but I want to understand in detail, to walk alongside the people of this land as they make their way onward.  They are living harder than us, for the most part, but one could argue they are living stronger, too, and maybe have much to teach us about strength, perseverance, even joy.  It is wonderful to be here again.  -- Jim C.