Friday-Jan.17th
This is our last day in PAP before we head to Desarmes! We
started off the morning by going to HELP (Haiti Education and Leadership
Program), a program focused to support talented, underserved Haitian students
from all around the country receive a university education and additional
English and leadership classes. We met
with Suzie Zeiger, an intermediate ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher
at HELP, and she spoke with us about strategies we could use to improve our
service in Desarmes (at GASA where we will be teaching English). Suzie said “the more I learn about Haiti, the
less I know.” We thought this was a very
interesting comment and relevant to how we feel as we learn more and more about
Haiti, its history and culture. There is
always a significant amount of complexity in any country, and we continue to
see this in Haiti. “There is always
another layer to peel back, like an onion.”
After meeting with Suzie, a couple of her students came and
talked with us. We were able to ask them questions about themselves, their
studies, culture, and hobbies. They also asked us about life in the United
States.
Later in the afternoon we had some free time! Some of us spent it washing our clothes by
hand! It was definitely a great
experience, and we truly realized how difficult it is!
Our last meeting in the afternoon as with Ayiti Kalije, a
media transparency organization in Haiti.
This organization focuses on activism in journalism, which is an unheard
of concept in Haiti, since most journalists are tied to the government. We learned that in the Duvalier era, many
journalists in Haiti were threatened, tortured or sent into exile. Today media has a large role in the
rebuilding of the nation. Ayiti Kalije
focuses specifically on truth telling and root causes. One of their goals is to explain how international
aid organizations work, which is rarely done in a country with many
international interventions. They do a
lot of work with community radios; which is the primary source of news for the
majority of Haitians. This organization
was inspiring because the main mission is to reach as many people as possible
as well as uniting foreign journalists and local journalists to expose the root
of the problems in Haiti.
We are excited to leave for Desarmes tomorrow! We will miss PAP and all the sounds and smells
that come with it. But we are ready to
go to Desarmes and learn new things and begin to teach English! On a side note: our dinner consisted of a
vegetarian salad (which Sharlene loved) and Doritos. Yep- you read that right… DORITOS! A very interesting meal to say the
least. We presume this idea came from
Eklan’s cook book titled “How to Cook for Blan (White People).” Haha you never know what will happen in
Haiti!
XOXO Shar-Shar and Megalicious
No comments:
Post a Comment