Teaching

This week is exam week and last week of school for the local children. I start teaching again. We have visitors come. All the children line up. They are given colored bells. They try to have a song with bells. Each color makes a different sound. Everyone gets a beanie baby, the children all want their favorite pick. There are many. They empty out a suitcase of clothes. All the children run. The 3 and 4 year olds are too small to do anything. I left them up and push them through. There are no clothes for them but the girl in my hands grabs a pair of shorts. There is never physical fighting or stealing. This always seem so to impress me how outside of verbal arguments and minor yelling for demands, everyone is always civil to one another. I feel like clothing distribution is survival of the fittest, whoever grabs in time gets in time.

One of the girls falls over the roots of a tree. Her lip is bleeding. Everyone watches her. She did not go home right after school they say. I take her inside. I try to carry her. I do not get far. She reaches my shoulders. I have become the house nurse since one of the boys busted his chin. How I got this position I do not know. I don’t know anything but how to clean and patch up a wound.

The last day of school the children close out. They move all the tables and desks attached to benches up to the house, where their original classroom used to be. One bench seats five students and is made out of wood. The children start carrying them across. Most are between the ages of five to ten. Two carry one bench table. I’m impressed. I help two girls. One is at the front and the other lifts from the middle over her body. The bench is still too heavy for me. They lift it up the stairs, I lift the bottom.

Haitian children are stronger than me. Even the 10 year old boys grab my hands and squeeze them so strong I yelp. Perhaps my runner’s legs will compete with their lower body. The upper body strength of the children amazes me. I feel so weak in front of them. How fast they bounce back to life, play and work barely eating is beyond me. simply stated- their strength in life amazes me.