A School Day, a School Crisis, a School Lunch

 

This school day at St. Etienne in Salmadere starts like any other anywhere--with kids gathering, shouting, laughing, chasing. Classes begin at eight. Students grab pews from inside the church and drag them out under a brand new tarp Pere Walin has brought as a sunshade. Another class hauls pews out to a shady spot in the shadow of the church wall. The rest of the children and teenagers take places by section inside the church. Because the walls are ventilated, sounds ring out clearly. Teachers settle down their classes, and the day begins.

Jorge and I stand behind a low cinder block wall to observe a class set up under a shade tarp beneath a mango tree. We try to be unobtrusive,  but the presence of all of the blancs is distracting to the kids. The teacher is a personable, lively young man. He leads 38 kids who are maybe nine or ten in a grammar lesson. The teacher gesticulates, walks among his students, has them read orally together. There's lots of drilling and student involvement. I'm impressed. He maintains the attention of his students well, despite our presence and those that are a consequence of the environment. Oh, how the planned new building will help!

The environment is mighty distracting to me personally, maybe because it's so different from my own classroom at St. Stephen's in Austin. The day is hot and bright.  Sounds of the little kids singing and clapping drift out of the nearby church. Boys who need to pee wander a few yards away and unzip by the bushes. Girls drift off to the outhouse. Chickens squawk as they peck in the schoolyard and a goat bleats. How could a kid possibly maintain focus on verb conjugations? But the teacher and the kids really try.

Then an unexpected and scary event occurs. A boy starts convulsing in what appears to be a seizure. Kids back away in panic while the boy bucks and thrashes. The teacher helps the boy to the ground then runs for assistance; Jorge and I dash around the low wall separating us from the class and sit with the boy and make sure he's stable.  He starts to come around. The other children are frightened and talking in rapid-fire Kreyol. Pere Walin comes over and asks us what we saw. We describe it, and he shakes his head. "Ah, epilepsy," he says. He grimly walks away to talk with the teacher.

The children pull pews away from the boy who has been gently moved by another teacher, who lays the boy on a separate pew. The class continues. After fifteen minutes or so of rest, the boy rejoins his class. As a privileged  American, I am left thinking, Where's the school nurse? There isn't one. So when does this kid see a neurologist? Perhaps never.

Inside the church, Lydia also witnesses a medical disruption in a class of small children. A little boy begins to vomit, then retches again and again. The teacher takes him outside; Lydia carefully lifts the other children out of the mess on the floor. A virus? The flu? Again, who knows.

After those dramatic moments comes the best part of the day for any kid anywhere--recess. There's more jumping rope, more chasing, more hand-clapping, and more singing, with our students joining in the fun. On any playground of little children there are always a few outliers. One small girl sits in the shade, very still, with the erect carriage of children who are learning to balance heavy objects on their heads. She quietly observes the others without joining in. A little boy wanders between the outside pews, trailing his fingers over the wood. In a culture as social and emphatically extroverted as Haiti's is, it must be very difficult in some ways to be shy or introspective. I find myself thinking about these little loners several times during the day.

At last comes the most critical  part of the school day: lunch. The kids eat in shifts, little kids first. Most children bring a metal bowl and spoon from home, and a lunch lady ladles two heaping scoops of a mixture of white rice and black beans--a favorite meal of the children--into their bowls. Tomorrow the children will have extra protein--pieces of salami cut into the food mixture. Walin has brought several long salami sticks from Hinche. He explains to me that the school lunch is the only meal of the day for many of these children; if they miss school, they miss food. The little children sit on the floor or on the pews. Almost the only sound is the clank of spoons on metal. These kids are focused on food for the moment, and they don't leave a scrap behind.

Right now the school has in its storeroom fourteen 50 kg sacks of rice, a few boxes of sunflower oil, and Pere Walin's salamis. Perhaps there are other food stores, but this is the only storage area, and rice, oil, and salamis are what's here. When we picked up trash earlier in the school yard, we found dozens of opened and empty silver wrappers from the World Food Programme of high energy biscuits, a gift of the EU. These contain 450 calories, with 15 grams of protein, calcium, magnesum, iron, iodine, niacine, folic acid, panlothenic acid, and vitamins A-Retinol, B1, B2, B6, B12, C, D, and E. We are grateful our children have had these.


The single most important feature of the school is the water well. The presence of well water has had dramatic positive effects in the health of the children, according to Johnny.  Before school Julian, Philip, and Adam dug a trench that will form the base of a fence around the well. Pere Walin wants to protect the well so that its operation won't be interrupted by damage, as it is critically essential to the school and community. Currently there's a problem with the well. The pressure is lower than it should be, so Johnny brought funds from America to improve the well.

What is the cost of the St. Etienne feeding program?  About $600 US per month for 210 children--a bit under $3 US a month per child, or less than the cost of a single Starbucks latte or half a large Jamba Juice smoothie. I am certain I will never look at a twelve quarters or thirty dimes in the same way again. $3 a month prevents starvation for one of our kids, one of my kids.

I realize I am now thinking of these children as my people. How could I not? I've danced with them, been guided by them across a brown and gold hillside, had my hair patted and rearranged by them to meet Haitian standards. $3 x 210 x ten months. That's the goal for the feeding program this year, every year, adjusted for number of children and any rise in food prices. Surely we can do this.

How can we not?

(Donations gratefully accepted for the school's operating budget, which provides for student lunches and teacher salaries.)