Little children beaming and clutching American beanie babies to their chests when they receive our small gifts. (Thank you, St. Stephen's middle schoolers, for your kind donations.)- Shouts and singing, with plenty of smiles
- A teacher who asks me, "Please, give me a pen?" (Next year we will make gifts bags for the school's teachers which include pens, chalk, colored pencils, and other useful teaching supplies.)
- Several kids with medical or genetic problems: kids with bloody ears (possibly ruptured eardrums from easily treated ear infections, according to a pharmacist on a medical mission we meet later), a girl with a club foot, a girl with six fingers, a girl with very pronounced nodes on her neck
- The beautiful and spare church, made simply but with durable material, constructed by gifts of time, funds, and labor from St. Stephen's in Austin with support of additional donors. (The church doubles as a school building by day and party central by night.)
- The school's storeroom for food and supplies, all but empty except for rice, oil, and salami, with a single box of shared chalk at the top of a storage armoire
The most promising thing: the foundation for the forthcoming seven-classroom school building. In the aftermath of the Port-au-Prince earthquake, this will need to be redesigned to meet new construction guidelines, but the building is now on the near horizon. Included will be new chalkboards to replace the crumbling ones now in the school. The building is being designed using some ideas from a Haitian-designed school building intended for Brazil, with hopes that there will be solar power panels eventually. (Donations gratefully accepted for the building project.)
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