Timoun yo

Timoun yo – The Children

This week has been a little different from last week.  With the arrival of my family and departure of the medical team I came with, the focus of my “mission” here has changed from “serving” more to “getting to know”, specifically getting to know the kids at the school.  I feel a little bad because we’re not working as hard, but it sure is fun!

Our day starts on the front porch as the children (about 860) gather and sing their morning song as the flag is raised. Then they sing a “thank you” song as they walk calmly to class.  It’s really quite amazing the orderliness of these K-6th graders here.  And one might get the jump to the conclusion that there is an overabundance of discipline applied to keep things that way.  But I’ve not seen anything like that, and their actions at recess (when our fun really begins) makes it clear these kids are just like any others.  The only real difference is that they WANT to be at school.

The children’s day starts off in their open-air classrooms.  A teacher calls role and places an attendance chart in the corner of the chalk board.  A typical 6th grade class’ that I happened to look at showed the following:

	boys	girls	tot
enrolled	26	25	51
attended	26	25	51
absent	0	0	0

This simple chart tells you a lot.  First of all, these small classrooms are PACKED with kids, but you’d never know by judging from the lack of noise or chaos.  Second, even though some of these kids walk up to 3 hours to school they are rarely absent.  Again, these kids want to be there.  They realize this is their ticket to a better life.  And they get a lot for being here. They get served a breakfast and lunch.  They get a free education, they get to play with friends. And they get a goat.  Yes, the mission gives each child a goat once a school year to help provide for their family – almost as if to bribe the family for allowing the kid to be away from the family chores. Whether or not this all seems extreme – it works.  These kid’s attendance and discipline testify to that.

Our fun, though, starts a couple of hours into school.  At that point, the children have lunch and start to play for their short recess.  Rachel is mobbed by girls wanting pictures and I play “hot potato” with a bunch of kids and a football or two.  But Ryan is the true hero on their playground. After only a couple of days, many of the kids know him by name.  He plays soccer with them (which they all know quite well). He plays basketball and teaches them to shoot. And he teaches them how to throw a football. But mostly he’s just there to do what they want to do.  He stays out for a couple of hours through all the kids recesses.  If he tries to rest, they just come and get him and lead him by the hand back to their game.  He’s pretty dead by the time the kids go home but he seems to love it.

I can talk a little with the kids in creole but when you ask their names they give you a 10 syllable, unfamiliar string of sounds and I just can’t remember any of them.  However, there are a few boys and girls I recognize and like to play with each day.  Some are boisterous, some shy. Some can share well and some cannot.  Some take quickly to throwing a football and some look like they are throwing a watermelon.  In short, just typical kids – brawling, laughing, running, shouting, and playing and not wanting to leave the playground until the teacher’s 3rd stern warning.  They’ve really been fun to get to know.

The other ‘project’ we have with the kids is Rachel’s interviews.  As part of her Gold Award project that I discussed in the last blog, she is interviewing several of the children.  I was her cameraman today and got to hear their responses to her questions.  Probably not too surprising that most of the young ones were shy and barely audible with the older ones more confident in their answers.  Probably also not to surprising that their answers were pretty consistent.

“What are your favorite foods?” Rice, beans, corn, and sometime spaghetti

“What do you do for fun?” Play.  If anything specific it was soccer.  Some lied in front of their principal and said “study”!

“Do you believe in God?” Oui!

“What does God do for you?” Protects our family, gives us health, provides us food to eat.

There were several other questions with pretty consistent answers and you realize that the kids aren’t a lot different than most of the kids I know except just with a lot less options.  For their trouble, they each got a polaroid photo posing Rachel which they all enjoyed.  I also followed up a couple of times with a digital picture for Rachel to keep but in hindsight should have done that more often.

The last thing we got the opportunity to do before the children left school today was hand out some of the items we’d brought them.  They were so appreciative of the items! Their principal translated for us as we told them that the items were from people in America that were praying for them and wishing them the best! It was a special moment for all of us.

Academically speaking, I guess the biggest lesson from all of this for me is just that the basic nature of kids is pretty consistent regardless of their environment.  Children are incredibly adaptable to their circumstances, and these kids do things daily without complaint that, the very mention of which would be incomprehensible to most kids in America. They’ve also learned from their culture to ask for money after doing something for you (like helping air up a ball). But at their heart they all just want love, attention, and a little time to have fun.