Would You Like to Go to Church with Me?

I asked someone the other day what they did for fun on the weekends: “Well, I usually go to church.” Church is not a one hour on Sunday morning thing around here: Haitians go to church for fun, worship, and community. Many people have invited me to join them at church (hence the title).

My home parish here is The Episcopal Church of Sainte Croix. It is right next to the hospital and has its own school attached. The earthquake of 2010 razed both the church and the school. The people decided that it was more important to prioritize the building of the school first (a decision I entirely agree with), so worship is held in a temporary tin-roof structure with open sides. It is a friendly and welcoming congregation of about 100 people. My first Sunday here they were talking about me and my projects for about 5 minutes before the person next to me leaned over and translated from Creole to French---oops! Get excited, the feast day of Sainte Croix is in two Sundays and there are preparations under way for a great celebration!

I was invited by Madame Dominique, the “House Mom,” to join her at the Catholic church one night. The Catholic Church used to be the main landmark of Leogane until it too was razed. All that remains is the stunning mosaic altar and a large congregation that shares a tarp-covered structure with the Presbyterians next door.

Finally, last night I went with one of the teachers here to the Youth Night at the Baptist Church. We sang, we danced, we played hot potato, it was quite fun! “Youth” for them is basically anyone: the president of the Youth is married with two children!

So between these experiences, a few things that I have picked up about church in Haiti:

 1) Toddlers run the place. Literally. They just toddle around, being picked up by whoever and entertaining everyone, until the Eucharist starts and they are secured to a seat

2) It is long. Sunday liturgy is two and a half hours: church is what you do on Sunday  

3) It is in French and Creole: The Book of Common Prayer is in French, so the traditional prayers are in French but most of the other prayers, the sermon, and the announcements are all in Creole. Hymns are half and half.

4)  Everyone sings loudly. None of this quietly humming to yourself stuff: you are part of a choir! 

5) You will be asked to introduce yourself at any new church you go to… start practicing your Creole!

Now we are starting off a new week here at the school! I am halfway through the summer Biology class that I am teaching. Teaching biology in French has been a challenge in preparation (believe it or not, they don’t teach you the vocabulary for “hypophyseal portal system” in French classes) but a joy to teach! 

The Beginnings

Four days in and I would really like to write you a novel, but I will stick to some more information about L’Hopital Sainte Croix and the Nursing School.

I had my first look at L’Hopital Sainte Croix earlier this week. The staff was skilled and efficient and the wards clean, but the hospital itself is very different from what I am used to. Patients are housed in one of three wards: women, men, children. In each ward, there are between eight and ten patients, all about 2 feet apart from each other. The rooms are crowded with friends, family, nurses, and nursing students (2^nd and 3^rd year nursing students intern at the hospital during the summer). It was hot, crowded and loud.

The other thing that is incredibly difficult about L’Hopital Sainte Croix is that about half of it is not being used. Even before the earthquake, Sainte-Croix did not have the money to hire enough staff to operate at full capacity. For a while, they were just operating an outpatient clinic. Now more areas have opened but still almost half of the hospital space and equipment remains unused and the waiting room remains very full.

I have also learned quite a bit more about the nursing school. It was founded in 2005 by Dean Alcindor and has since graduated 70 nurses. It is the only Baccalaureate level nursing school in Haiti, meaning that it is the only nursing school that trains students for  the equivalent of the American RN. The students have internships or classes from 8 am to 4 pm and intern at a few different hospitals in the summer. They are very busy! They study Biology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, endocrinology, urology, ob/gyn and basically every other medical specialty that you could imagine, in addition to English, French, and ethics. After they graduate, most students look to work with NGOs in Haiti. Only three of the 70 graduates have left Haiti, which is a point of pride for the program. 

“Why do the nursing students need to know English?” was a question I heard (and asked!) a few times before I left the USA. The answer is that, according to the Dean, the best nursing books and manuals are in English. Additionally, she brings in instructors from the USA, so it is beneficial for the students to know English to be able to understand the lessons. Finally, with the large humanitarian presence here, English is being spoken more and more.

 As for me, my job description keeps getting bigger! I will be teaching English to the nursing students a couple of mornings a week, as well as co-teaching a biology course in French. My main task at l’Hopital Sainte Croix is going to be organizing the medical records so that they can be accessed quickly and easily, which Dean Alcindor says is going to be quite a task. Finally, the local Episcopal priest has asked if I will teach an English class about once a week at the Episcopal Secondary School. Looks like I am going to be busy!

Because we all know that the most trafficked blogs are food blogs, let me talk to you about food for a moment. In case you didn’t know, it is a wee bit warm in Haiti. The best way to combat this? The AMAZING selection of tropical fruits and juices that keep coming across my plate! Super juicy watermelon, bananas, sugar cane and these strange green pods with this sweet jello-like fruit inside I had never seen before! Fresh squeezed lime juice, passion fruit juice, and carrot juice! Teas made with fresh herbs and hot chocolate that tastes strangely similar to that which they make at the Lambertville Trading Company.

If anyone is looking for a good book about recent Haitian history, I just finished and enjoyed “The Big Truck That Went By” by Jonathan M. Katz. He mainly discusses the international response to the earthquake and cholera epidemic. I will warn you that the author does not have many nice things to say about either of these, but it is a good history of recent developments in Haiti.

Bienvenue sur Leogane!

It feels almost surreal to be writing this post… I have arrived in Haiti! After a feast of all of my favorites last night, Mom, Dad, and I took off for JFK airport at 4:30 this morning for my 3 hour and 50 minute flight direct from JFK to Port au Prince.

As we first crossed onto the land mass of Haiti, the man sitting next to me on the plane said, “You are going to have an extraordinary experience here.” As I looked out the window and saw beautiful blue water and gorgeous rolling hills, I could not help but agree.

The Port au Prince Airport gets a bad rap… I think it is probably better staffed and cleaner than JFK. Also, I have never been greeted by a live band getting off a plane in NYC J I was picked up right after baggage claim by a student from the nursing school and one of the nursing school’s drivers. We had some nice conversation, though I am having a bit of a hard time understanding this accent. Then again, I have been in the country for 6 hours so I probably should not get down on myself just yet.

Driving through Port au Prince was a surreal experience. There are people everywhere, drivers pull out from nowhere, and people just walk between cars trying to sell things. The buildings are colorful and some of the architecture is incredible. While rubble still lines the streets, there are definite signs of healing in the city’s many building projects. Upon leaving Port au Prince, we drove right along that gorgeous blue coast to Leogane. As my seat mate on the plane told me “at least the air moves a little bit out in Leogane,” which is absolutely true. The compound that I am staying on houses the nursing school dorms and classrooms as well as researchers from Notre Dame and I think that there is a guest house. There are chickens and turkeys wandering about and I was greeted right at the front gate by two baby goats: too cute!

Everyone at the nursing school has been incredibly kind and set me up in a lovely room: I even have a mirror and a fan! The head of the dorms refers to herself as everyone’s “mama” and she cooked me up more food than I could ever think about consuming for dinner! Fried plantains, rice and beans, pork, broccoli, and soup!  Excellent food and it filled me right up!

Here are a couple of pictures of my room for your enjoyment! I am still unpacking so please forgive the suitcases! 

Go Forth and Set the World on Fire

With these weighty words, we lit our candles and were welcomed in as members of the Fordham University family. Four years later, we would sit on the same quad, surrounded by the same people and be challenged with the same words. This time, however, wearing silly hats and long robes, these words meant much more. It is easy to talk about doing good, to learn strategies for cultural sensitivity, and to debate how to work towards social justice. But actually sitting there, actually being sent out to set the world on fire, I could not help but think “Oh Crap.”

Truth is that I have few better examples than St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, as I head out on Mission (Fordham is one of the 28 Jesuit universities in the USA). St. Ignatius developed a revolutionary way of teaching: teach everyone, regardless of whether or not they can pay. Teach them philosophy, theology, literature, science, culture. And make sure that no matter what you teach them, you teach them to use it for the good of the world around them. After he had trained his colleagues who would spread his way of living the Gospel around the world, he sent them off with the call to “Set the World on Fire!” Their message spread around the world and lives on to this day. 

Sitting here on the patio behind my house on a cool summer day less than a week before my departure, I cannot help but imagine what it was like for these men: leave behind everything you have ever known to head off into the unknown, unsure of whether you will ever come home again.  In comparison, my journey is easy. I can Skype with my parents, e-mail with my friends, and know that there are daily direct flights JFKà Port-au-Prince.

Still, people often ask me “how do you get ready to leave for a year?” The short answer is that you spend a lot of time on hold: with the phone company, the insurance company, the credit card company. You buy a year’s supply of bug spray and sunscreen. You have your hair cut, your teeth cleaned, your wisdom teeth removed. You load your Kindle with books, go to the pharmacy at least 9 times, clean your room. And then you breath. You take the long way home and drive through the fields around your town at sunset, breathing in the brilliant scent of growing corn. You eat incredibly well because your Mom wants to make sure you get your fill of all of your favorites for a year. Friends call, come to visit, write your lovely cards to send you on your way.

You take the time to realize that you are not being sent on mission as an individual. You are going out as a member of a community, a brilliant community that has raised you, nurtured you, and allowed you to come into who you are. And in this way, I feel an enormous kinship with the Ignatius’ fire-setters. They were sent as representatives of their community to spread good news, to work for systemic change towards equality and education based solutions towards poverty. They were sent out as representatives of communities that they believed in, to do work that they believed in. They too were unsure of where they were going or how they would be transformed. And yet they went and here I am writing about them hundreds of years later.