Update from Haiti

I’m not even sure how to begin. Emotions on this trip have run the gamut. At the exact moment we start to feel like the situation is too daunting, something wonderful happens and our vim and vigor is restored.

From a town called Petit Goave, we drove over the beautiful mounts to the southern coast of Haiti. We’re in a town called Jacmel. It was founded (and by “founded” I mean taken over by Europeans) in the late 1600s. Builders here ordered wrought iron from Paris for balcony grilles. Visitors from New Orleans saw the work and copied the style in Louisiana.

Today, Jacmel is a beach town with many tourists (but not nearly as many as before the earthquake). The schools are similar to the ones we’ve already seen. Over-crowded, no materials, multi-age classes, extremely poor sanitation, and no food or portable drinking water. But, the kids are, of course, amazing. A few sad faces, but in general there are many smiles to go around.

We’re interviewing students and teachers in small focus groups. They all point to things like lack of material, health, no pay for teachers (yep, no pay) and basic infrastructure issues like lack of electricity and safe buildings. The IRC Healing Classrooms model is perfect for Haiti. We’re also hoping that our teacher training programme will help educators deal with classroom management problems and literacy issues (lack of reading skills for both students and teachers).

I’ve welled up with tears when I see the conditions people have to deal with, and I’ve sung with joy when I hear the dreams of students and know that the Pearson/Nokia/IRC offering will help. More on that when we finalize the assessment.

We drove up into the mountains today to visit a rural school. As I stood in the old fort overlooking the beautiful Jacmel bay and watched the kids using my SLR camera to take photos, I thought, “I’m here! I really get to this. I get to meet these amazing people who live on less than one dollar per day, but have the best outlook on life.” They are proud and want the best for their country. 

By Erik Gregory