Laugh, Relax, Surrender, and March Forward.

Laugh, relax, surrender, and march forward.

I’ve come to expect the unexpected around here, which has proven well worthwhile. Haiti moves at its own pace in its own style, and it’s best not to fight it. You have to ease in and surrender to the reality of what is, maintain a flexible stance, open expectations, and a go-with-the-flow attitude to absorb the experience. This is a good lesson for me, one I had been trying to cultivate back in Chicago, and something I hope to carry forward into my life as a pre-doctoral intern at Michigan this fall. Having less control over your environment as I do in Haiti lends itself to some good insight and appreciation.

I spent a couple days early this week observing different teachers of the kindergarten kids. The strategy of choice for teachers here, at least as far as the kindergarteners are concerned, appears to be responding to frustration with yelling, smacking the desk with a plastic golf club, or grabbing a misbehaving kid and sitting them down in the corner. Unfortunately and predictably, none of this works and the kids keep misbehaving and appearing to learn at a snail’s pace. Moreover, the teachers’ method of helping kids to write is for them to write a sentence on the board and have the kids write it at their desks while the teacher sits and grades papers for the next 40 minutes. Any time the kids would come up with a question or start having conversations with each other, SMACK goes the club and everyone is quiet…for the next 30 seconds. 

It’s difficult to watch. I know there are more effective ways of teaching and providing discipline. I do empathize with the teachers’ lack of training, overcrowded classrooms with several students who would likely be in their own classrooms or have a 1:1 teacher in the United States, and the lack of stability most of the kids have at home. While I’ve been primarily engaged in conducting activities for the little kids and teaching English, my psychology brain is constantly asking how I can help the teachers more effectively manage their classes in regard to discipline and helping the kids to learn. It struck me that the principles I learned from having briefly taught parenting classes for graduate school several years ago could apply nicely for teachers at the school here. The idea is called Positive Discipline (excerpted from books by Jane Nelson, Ed.D.), which draws heavily from Adlerian psychology and is built on the idea that kids need primarily encouragement and mutual respect to flourish (with regard to parenting and classroom environments). The basic idea is that punishment, criticism, placating, and exercising one’s authority as an adult without due explanation and fairness all hinder positive development and lead to predictable misbehavior. Kids just want to fit in and feel useful and there’s usually a good reason for their misbehavior. If teachers/parents can learn to understand and respond to those reasons, they can alter the way they approach discipline to encourage the children to make choices, feel useful and loved, and experience the natural consequences of their actions (not contrived ones that don’t follow the behavior). There would likely be major changes in the children’s and teachers’ day-to-day experiences for the better. So today I spent a couple hours with a Haitian teacher who’s fluent in English translating a worksheet from English to Creole. I’m hoping Sister Gloria will arrange a meeting with everyone so I can explain it and have them use this as a resource for the classroom. I have no idea how successful it will be, but it’s always good to have more ideas than less, right?

Another lesson learned this week: never underestimate the creative potential of crate paper, twine, scissors, and tape. Maguy and I have continued doing art projects with the kids and she’s always interested in my ideas for good hand stretches and activities to get the kids to improve their concentration. This week we made origami boats and Haitian flags for Flag Day, a national holiday tomorrow. For the origami you would normally use 8.5 x 11 printing paper, but printing paper is a scarce commodity around here, so what sounded like an easy idea was actually quite a bit of leg work to prepare. I hand cut 30 pieces of exactly 8.5 x 11 pieces of  paper from a giant roll of poster paper (thankfully we found a paper cutter or else it would have been hopeless). The kids knew no difference and we had a fun time making boats. Maguy also let me lead the stretches at the beginning of class which I enjoyed. 

Crate Paper + Glue + Scissors = Flag

Although teaching English to the kids has been fun, I’ve grown to really love my weekly informal English lessons with the Haitian teachers. We all share a teacher lounge where we eat lunch together and hang out between classes. Many Haitian teachers are eager to learn English and we’ve started to sit down for 60-90 minutes every Friday to review. Last week was food (Haitian food in English words), and this week we’re going to make sentences with those words. I’m inspired by their desire to constantly learn so much, and I can only imagine if I were in a daily environment where it would behoove me to learn 3 languages, I’d be fluent sooner than later.

Last weekend we were invited to a party at the Chilean’s house about 1.5 miles from our seminary compound. This party was another good example of the benefits of surrendering to the situation. We arrived at around 7:00pm and were told we’d make pizzas. We got there before the sun set because we were walking and had never been there, so we didn’t want to get lost after dark. When we arrived, the Chileans were all hanging out but very low key, relaxed and quietly reading, sleeping, or spending time on Facebook. This went on for the next three hours, and Clare and I were thinking maybe we should have brought some cards or beer or something. Turns out they were all aware of something we weren’t: the party wasn’t even starting until 10 and would be raging all night. Around 10, a crew of U.N. Chilean soldiers who were friends of our friends arrived with an abundant supply of beer and pizza ingredients. Another two guys from the Dominican arrived with a serious set of P.A. speakers, and the party was on from there. Those Chileans (and Clare) kept dancing until the sun came up. They also LOVE American top 40 music and music that used to be top 40, like the Spice Girls. When you hear “I’ll tell you what I want what I really really want” being loudly sung by a machismo Chilean male, all you can do is laugh and keep dancing. I had to take a three hour break and sleep from about 2-5am. When I woke up to more top-40 pop tunes blaring in the room next to me, I figured what the hell; I might as well join the party and keep dancing. After the sun rose, Clare and I spent the next three hours with our friend Gonzalo on the roof discussing differences and similarities between American, Chilean, and Haitian culture and politics. We spent Sunday sleeping. 

View of the party from the roof

 Last Wednesday we had a national holiday and both our work was cancelled for the day. Clare and I were told the kids from the school were participating in a parade and we were invited to come along to watch (or so we thought). At 7:30 am we hopped in a pick-up truck Haitian style, meaning the cab was full and I rode alongside 25 Haitian kids – yes, I counted – jam packed in the bed of the normal-sized truck. We drove three miles to Bon Repos where the parade was supposed to be. I’m not sure what we expected, but when we arrived everyone hung out in a fenced in area for about an hour and then commenced to start marching in the parade. As it turned out, we were the parade. The parade involved all the kids and teachers from the school slowly following a pick-up truck blaring Haitian pop and hip-hop music with a couple teachers in the bed of the truck singing through the P.A. Apparently the march was for peace, but we couldn’t read the signs and nobody told us in English what was going on, so we were none the wiser. The kids were dancing and singing, loving every second of their march. It was pretty hilarious for the first 30 minutes, but temperatures have a way of soaring when you’re standing on the Haitian streets and because we didn’t know what we were in for, we didn’t bring water or money. Three hours later we finally arrived back to the compound, sunburnt and partially dehydrated. The Haitian kids and adults appeared to have gone on a leisurely stroll, laughing and wondering what was wrong with the Blancs (Creole for Whitey). Clare’s only way to help them understand was to have them imagine coming to Chicago in January with no winter coat or boots and going for a walk around the city for three hours. 

The march

At the march for peace

This weekend Clare and I are traveling to Kenskoff, a town up in the mountains about 2.5 hours and 5 tap-tap rides away from where we live in Croix-des-Bouquetes (pronounced Kwa-day-boo-kay). Maguy lives there with her two sons and invited us to stay with her for the weekend. We hear it’s beautiful and can’t wait to explore. It also gives me an appreciation for how far people travel on a regular basis for work. Maguy and I have been excitedly talking all week about food; she is eager to have American food and we’re eager to eat more Haitian (and I am also really missing good American food). So we decided that Clare and I would make recipes for two nights and she would do one for the other night. What could be more American than pizza and tacos?! We’re going to attempt to make homemade tacos and pizza and are hoping there’s enough semblance of an oven to make it all happen. Either way I’m sure it will be a great adventure. I’m just going to keep following the mantra: laugh, relax, surrender, and march forward.

-Aaron

As Aaron mentioned, we’ve had some more practice at some of life’s great lessons this week. Being here is a strange way to learn how to do the simple things like slow down, be patient, let go of control of a situation, and ease into a rhythm foreign to you. I realized this early in the party Saturday night (or by that time was it Sunday morning?). While I was eating pizza and listening to that Black Eyed Peas song for the 3^rd time, I realized those were to only two things familiar to me most of the night and that day. Earlier that day to get to the party at the Chileans house, we walked through the labyrinth of tall poured concrete walls, inconsistent hand painted street signs, and rocky/dusty roads armed only with a hand-drawn map to lead us to an unknown destination. It made me recall a feeling of panic I may have had if I was driving anywhere in Chicago for the first time without my GPS. Or how I may have felt going to a party where I didn’t know anyone in Chicago. But none of that brought us stress and instead we were thrilled to get off the compound, be more proficient in getting around, and loved making new friends through the universal language of parties and gestures. There’s really no other way to feel because everything around us and a lot of the experiences are simply brand new or part of our everyday life that was once a new experience.

As Aaron mentioned, the first few hours before the Chilean party was the calm before the storm. I’ve never seen a house full of people move so slowly and I had the impression by about 10 pm most of them were waking up from a long nap. Slowly the Barbancourt, Prestige, and Pisco (a Chilean liquor made from grapes) came out and things picked up steadily over several hours and erupted into a full blown out dance party by 2am which continued until about 6 am. The thing I love most about the Chileans is no one feels shy on the dance floor. There’s not a wall flower in the bunch and it makes it easy to get along with them. I had fun showing a few of my Chilean co-workers pictures of a party I went to my first weekend in Haiti in 2010 at the same house with the same old dog still laying around. There’s a lot of history there and the relationship between the American Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis (HMMoM) and America Solidaria volunteers runs deep. 

The Chilean house courtyard at dusk - all clean and ready to party

Chilean's communal living room

Even Arturo the house dog knows to chill and store up energy before the party

I loved hearing how their impressions of Haiti were so different than what had been showed in our respective countries on the news, as I could totally relate. Having your family and friends believe you’re trekking off into a war zone is part of the ex-pat experience no matter what country you’re from. At the risk of sounding cliché, nothing in the media can give you a sense of what a beautiful and culturally rich country Haiti is. We then got into the topic of what our home towns were like and I told them I was from Detroit. They were all familiar with the city through the bad press and images of a completely depressed landscape. I went on to defend Detroit for how unique and culturally rich the city is when one of them pointed out, “It sounds like Detroit is like Haiti in that way.”

A conversation in three languages

Our Tri-lingual therapy team past and present

Did I mention the Chileans are damn good dancers?

Looking on in amazement

Learning how to do the Chilean version of the electric slide

Can you guess who won?

This week I made educating my patients a focus and can only say amazing things about my Parkinson’s patient.  She’s progressing well through the LSVT exercises for only being seen once a week, making accommodations to her lifestyle, moving with greater amplitude and most importantly perhaps, taking her sinamet regularly. Last week she was asking difficult questions about Parkinson’s that really made me appreciate how hard it is for a Haitian to get a clear understanding of what’s ailing them. Her questions (in this order I believe) were “Is Parkinson’s contagious? Will I ever be cured? Does it get worse?” I answered all of them truthfully with hope, expecting an outpouring of grieving, but instead she wanted to get to work and was anxious to learn what was in her power to control. Today we went back to the OT basics and we did some complex self-care tasks Haitian style. I believe there’s even a glimmer of hope for Rosy too, as her Mom was cuing in a much more appropriate way this week. I’m cautious to call it a victory yet or anytime soon, but I’m hopeful. Wednesdays are frightening for me because we see all pediatrics all day, which is far from my specialty, but Kendra the American PT (and pediatric expert) has been great at gently leading me through some treatment ideas. I can ask her anything without worrying about how experienced I sound (or don’t) and I’m super grateful for her mentorship with the peds and in all things Haitian in general. A technician on leave had me leading a few stroke exercise classes this week but I spent a good amount of time explaining stroke and answering questions they had. I used what I could recall from grad school of the Kawa Model frame of reference to explain stroke through metaphors used in nature. While my knowledge of the model is super rusty, I appreciate that non-Western thinkers and people from developing nations need a way to understand their illness that fits with how they know the world. My average American patient wants to hear of the latest research supporting my treatment, but I find Haitians want their treatment and education of their illness to match their intuition.

Function never goes out of style

 This upcoming month we have a million things to look forward to. Our much anticipated trip to Kenskoff is less than a day away. Anyone can check out a resort in Haiti, but I’m honored to be invited into the home of a lovely Haitian teacher and partner in education of Aaron’s…in the beautiful mountains no less! Plus, to have the opportunity to cook food and break bread with new friends is perhaps the best part. The weekend after that we got invited to a compound wide party at a very nice beach I’m told. Two weekends after that is Aaron’s birthday trip to the beautiful and historic beachside city of Jacmel, followed by the weekend of Andy and Kelli’s wedding in Greeektown, Detroit.

We haven’t even been here a month, but I can feel that time is moving too quickly. So I’m trying to stand still in the evenings as the air gets cool and listen to the chickens and peacocks crowing, dogs barking, radios far off blaring kampa music, children playing, birds chirping, motos growling, the beat of cars’ horns and hand drums, mangoes thumping against the ground, and the usual distant rain storm rolling in that ushers in the evening.

-Clare