Breaking Us In

Week two in Haiti has proven eventful and fun. Monday was my first day teaching English for the 7th graders. I had two classes and the English Club, an informal elective in which the students can practice their English and learn more of what they want. I found out that day I would be co-teaching with a new Haitian English teacher named Dacila, which was fantastic news. An energetic and enthusiastic man in his mid-thirties, Dacila speaks English well and as a Haitian is fluent in Creole. Our lesson in the class was focused on reading some dialogue, telling time, asking for and giving permission, and other things along those lines. The classrooms, no matter what age, all have one thing in common: they are loud and somewhat chaotic. Dacila and the other teachers also have one thing in common: they are also loud and therefore able to control the class. I'm not a shy person per se, but I realized that to even be heard in class I had to basically use a yelling volume. It was good for me. The kids all (eventually) began repeating my phrases, though I'm not sure how much they comprehended in the end.

Interestingly, I realized students' grade level doesn't necessarily reflect their age; my 7th grade students ranged from 12-16 years old and appear to all have varying degrees of English language ability. It makes it difficult to know if our lesson is on target, but it's what the principal wanted us to use, so that's what it is.

My English Clubs went well too (on different days of the week, one for 7th, 8th, and 9th). I'm still trying to figure out the best way to run it because some students are much more active and well versed in English so I tend to let them ask the questions and try to apply it to everyone else in the class. I gave them music as a topic to consider for the following week since they all love music. My best English speaker in 8th grade asked if we could review some Lil' Wayne so I told him I'd check it out, not having really ever listened to his music. Needless to say, it will be a severely truncated review and maybe we can do a chorus or two of one of the songs, but otherwise it's hilariously and totally inappropriate. The kids laughed when I told them I didn't know the music well and thought it was funny they knew more American music than I do - which is totally true with regard to pop culture.

Cultural lesson #1 of the week: When you make even the slightest suggestion that you may do something, it appears to be a promise set in stone (at least to kids and adolescents at the school). Since telling that one student I would probably sing for him at some point, him and at least 10 other boys and girls from school have come up to me and demanded, "Ou chante! Ou chante pou mwen konye a!" (You sing! You sing for me now!) It hasn't stopped since last week. My other student who wanted to go over Justin Bieber wasn't present in my English Club, and when one of the girls looked at me with rolled eyes and gestured like she was singing into a microphone as if to say, "You promised...what's up with that?!" So knowing it was inevitable, I asked what the class wanted me to sing. The only thing they could agree on was the United States' National Anthem. "Okay, I can do that for you" I said, only then realizing I might not even know all the lyrics by heart since I've never sang it solo before. With a class full of expectant eyes and a grinning Dacila next to me, I proceeded to sing all of the National Anthem with only one line of fudged words that nobody noticed. Everyone appeared to be satisfied with that and gave me a round of applause like I had just introduced a baseball game or something. I then of course asked them to sing their national anthem, which they did without batting an eye. It was impressive; they even hummed the horn parts together in between the verses!

Cultural lesson #2 of the week: Being a White person makes me easily remembered by EVERYONE. Even after a week and a half of being at the school every day, not a day goes by where kids aren’t coming up to me and shouting my name, “Hey Mr. Aaron! Mr. Ceresnie!!” I was impressed they remembered my name, but more so I was impressed that nobody mispronounces my last name in Haiti. This is hilarious to me because about 75% of people who try to say “Ceresnie” for the first time in the United States inevitably mispronounce it in some fashion.

I had a fun week with the little kids too. We threw a big party for two Italian kids who attended the school and moved back to Italy on Friday. They have lived here for the past three years and their parents worked on various gardening, teaching, and construction projects from what I could gather. The children’s mother came with three cakes and a bunch of juice for the packed classroom of about 60 kids for their party. They set up the school P.A. and everyone got to sing or say their final appreciations and goodbyes to the kids. It was really sweet.

Maguy the resource teacher, another volunteer Karla, and the primary teachers took the kids on a tour of some of the farther reaches of the St. Charles Seminary compound (where we live and where the rehab and primary clinic are located). It was a lot of fun! We got an in-depth view of the vast gardens, cement brick factory, and industrial bakery which makes bread rolls and different types of pasta for the compound to eat and to sell. We got hands on demonstrations of the process and got a much closer view than would likely be allowed back in the United States (which was both awesome and a bit nerve wracking given the little kids, ages 4-6, wanting to explore and touch everything).

Teaching the kids how to make bread

Cement block factory

Maguy showing the kiddos the beautiful gardens on the compound

Pigs at the end of the garden!

I got a chance to sit down with Maguy later in the week one-on-one, which was really helpful. She explained to me more of her role and objectives with the school. I learned that she has is new there and met with skepticism from the teachers who don't want to change any of their teaching methods. She has some ideas adopted from a Chilean teaching program and wants me to sit down and observe the classrooms while she is out of town during the next two weeks and write my impressions of what the teachers are doing in class. This shouldn’t be too difficult, even without speaking too much of the language.

Speaking of Creole, Clare and I started our lessons last week with Jonel, one of the principals of the school. We learned the alphabet, numbers, days, months, some common phrases and other vocabulary. The other teachers and kitchen personnel at the school have also spent time every day sitting down with me and Karla (the other school volunteer from Chile) to give us informal lessons. Many of the teachers at the school speak multiple languages and will sit across the table from me and Karla giving us the same lesson, explaining it first in Spanish and then in English. I’m feeling more a little more confident each day with my Creole and at this point can hold very basic conversations, although it’s pretty easy to get lost. On a daily basis I hear English, Spanish, Creole, Italian, and French…it’s a remarkably diverse linguistic environment, though none of the nuns here speak English.

We mentioned in our first blog post that I left my guitar at my brother’s house in Florida by accident, which I was pretty bummed about. Earlier this past week I mentioned to Sister Gloria (the feisty nun in charge of the school and my main boss) that I played guitar but didn’t have one here. She jumped up excitedly, bolted out of the dining room, and proudly displayed a Spanish classical guitar that some volunteer left a while ago. She told me to hang on to it, but not before she picked it up and laughingly strummed a few chords. The nuns here seem to have an uncanny ability to make anything appear out of nowhere.

Sister Gloria basking in the glow of making my music dreams come true

On Friday I’m not sure what I ate or was exposed to, but I got really nauseous and sick to my stomach all day. I went back to my room and rested for a bit, but I couldn’t miss my meeting with one of the Haitian workers on the compound to show me how to make pikliz (pronounced pick-leez), a spicy Haitian coleslaw I’ve been excited about trying since I learned about it before coming here. So I sat and watched her show me how to make it and was sad I couldn’t stomach any food that day (or the next). But I got to try it today and it’s delicious…totally worth the wait! 

Pikliz!!

I was feeling pretty much back to normal with a healthy appetite by Sunday, ready to drink a Prestige after dinner and relax before tackling the week ahead. Sunday night the nuns threw a nice Colombian dinner of empanadas, fried plantains, juice and beer outside under the courtyard arbor to celebrate/commemorate three volunteers who were leaving. The nuns don’t like spicy food, but the Haitian cooks requested I bust out the pikliz, which all the Haitians and volunteers present loved. Culture win!

 

Aaron

View at sunset out of our window

View of the clinic and dormitories from Google earth

View of the larger compound and surrounding neighborhood from Google Earth

To echo what Aaron said, week two has been a lot of fun. Clinic-wise, I’ve enjoyed working with the patients immensely and am thrilled when I can connect with them or make then laugh with (or maybe because of) my limited creole. I would describe creole as a string of beads on a necklace with each bead being a 2-syllable word with very subtle vowel sounds. When people speak to me, I feel like I can grab a few beads at a time and usually not in the consecutive order they are strung. But ultimately, I enjoy my work for what is it and what it always has been, which is connecting with my patients. I was encouraged by a patient last week who said I will learn creole quickly if I enjoy people. I hope that’s the case.

My Parkinson’s patient somehow got a hold of another round of Sinamet (I still have no idea how) and was able to demonstrate really god carry-over of her large amplitude exercises so it was a win-win across the board. I pulled my favorite “I’m watching you” trick of shouting out clinic window at her to mache gwo (walk big) as she was leaving and she turned and around, smiled, and increased her stride length and arm swing. I feel like she is going to make slow and steady progress and overtime require no cuing at all.

Some treatment techniques are not as universal as my current struggle with the mother of a 25 year-old developmentally delayed woman named Rosy with poor initiation, attention, and little non-verbal communication who has the goal of being able to do something, anything at home. She’s perfectly capable of assisting with tasks and can carry out 1-2 step directions, so this goal seems right within reach but she needs cuing and supervision, which is where her mother comes in. I was lucky enough to have probably the best and brightest 16 year-old English translator from the Louviture Clearly school to help me educate the mother, but we still have a long way to go. The mother at this time cues her the only way she knows how to cue a misbehaving child: in harsh tone, slap and a tug, and enough verbal cues to send anyone into a processing overload. Naturally Rosy’s response to this is to bat back at her mother and shut down completely from all interaction. This is really heartbreaking to witness. At this point, I’m aiming to have the mother view Rosy as someone with logical motivation instead of someone who is defiant and rebellious when she shuts down. Our new goal (a few steps back from where I initially started) is to have the mother interact in a positive way with Rosy, to make her smile and laugh, so she can see those motivations in action. I’m really hoping to win the mother over with this new way of dealing with her daughter. For now, I at least won over the interpreter, who was able to coax Rosy back into the clinic after she had shut down by engaging her with a puzzle as we walked. It was really sweet to see this 16 year-old interpreter step up and coax Rosy that way. I know from experience that not all Haitian mothers view their disabled children the way Rosy’s mother does, but I felt better knowing that Rosy’s community has one more patient and understanding advocate in it (the interpreter).

Another challenge this week was to do a cognitive and visual exam on a 20 something young Haitian man who was blind from a congenital birth defect. Although it’s not fair to blame Haiti for the lump in my throat, this assessment would’ve been plenty difficult at home. His goal is to go to school which is tough for anyone in Haiti with a disability. I reasoned with him that he would at least need to be able to navigate an unfamiliar environment without someone holding onto him, and with that we set some goals. First, Verito, the other Chilean OT, and I had to determine what he could see. With some creative pantomiming and descriptions from our Haitian rehab manager/interpreter, we were able to establish he could see shadows by him asking us “What’s the word in English when the sun makes two of you?” Generally though, he could not pick out shapes when they were held against the blinds so it seems that the shadows he sees are pretty vague. He can sometimes pick out familiar people in the right lighting. I tossed out my ideas for a low vision cognitive assessment, walked him outside into the courtyard, and presented him with some off-the-cuff cause and effect problems: “Why won’t water go into this bucket?” After examining the bucket with his hands he said, “Because the lid is on.” “What could I do to make this rope work better?” “Undo the knot in it.” After a few more (challenging) questions to determine that his cognition was solid, we worked on having him ambulate with a cane sweep to navigate his environment. It’s a shaky thing to learn at his age, but I’m hopeful he’ll get more confident with some practice. The rehab technician jumped into the exercise by placing obstacles in his path, and for a first time, I felt he did alright navigating around them with a cane sweep. There’s a grocery stand down the street from the clinic with his name on it; my long term goal is to have him get himself there confidently. Gulp.

Verito and I - hermanas de terapi occupational

Other than that, the week has been a slow-paced one for me, as a few bouts of illness had me run down. The first was a head cold and the second was a touch of (likely) viral gastroenteritis that I caught from Aaron. I look at it as Haiti’s way of breaking in my immune system. Hopefully I’m good to go but the nausea hasn’t totally let up yet. The nuns, cooks, and other workers have all been looking out for us really well and like to make us soup when they know a bug is going around. It’s sweet how maternal they are when they know we’re not well. I really feel part of a family here.

Speaking of family, our rehab team is established here with me and Verito as the two OTs and Kenda and Paulina (who arrived from Chile last week) as the two PTs. We have two Haitian rehab technicians/assistants. It’s been a great idea sharing and swapping environment in the clinic with any combination of 3 languages spoken at a time. Erin left last week and I was sad to see her go. Inspired by her tireless efforts, Aaron and I got to work this weekend on some projects she wanted to complete. Below are pictures of a platform walker we worked on. We had a curious little helper from the school wander into the clinic while we were working so we put him to work on some smaller tasks. He was eager to help us problem solve and try out the platform walker once we’d finished it. Mesi anpil zanmi mwen! (Thank you very much my friend!)

Using a drill bit to puncture aluminum framing

Weekend Warriors

Alright so he's a little big for this walker but it looks like a win!

Next week I hope for better health, better Creole, and most importantly success and progress in the clinic. Haiti is a beautiful country and I look forward to experiencing it with some upcoming outings. More on that later.

Clare

Our peacock admiring his reflection...for hours, and probably doing so as you're reading this