21 – Swing set

 

We get back, have lunch and break into groups for afternoon activities before class at 2pm. However, there is a giant pile of rubble which I have been determined to make use of since I arrived although I have no offers of assistance since it’s not the most exciting of activities. My reason for doing this is to try and help the mums of the school children; when not at school or in their uniforms, the kids are often knee deep in dirt. This (along with the lack of clothing owned) explains why the kids run around in next to nothing. Another reason is that there are a large number (including teens) who are not entirely toilet trained. When the world is your toilet, I can understand this approach – if you soil yourself and have no pants on, there is one less thing to wash. My logic was to cover the mucky play yard with the unwanted gravel, thus, hopefully, lowering the kid/uniform to mud ratio and helping the mothers to avoid having to perform the laborious task of washing their little uniforms every day.

The play-yard now has lots of fun things for the pupils and seeing how happy playing makes them, is like a present all tied up with a giant bow. When I appear to be getting nowhere, Katie, Molly, Chelsey and I try to make a swing set. After a valiant attempt and a rejection of any help from the boys (who think they can do better) we opt to set off to replace the empty beer bottles.

By now, the sensation in my leg has become more intense and every now and again it falls to sleep. We set off to Jonas the dry-cleaners (not in the sense of a typical dry-cleaners, more of a one-hut-does-all kind of thing) and manage to rope Jake into carrying some of the bottles for us. He has just finished his afternoon run (the refugee camp sent its workers home early) and hasn’t even got his breathe back, but he has no say in the matter! The rest of us share the remaining load of empty Coke bottles. However, Jonas can’t help us and we try a couple of the other usual places. We manage to get some for a ridiculous price but we fancy a drink, so decide to pay for it. Of course, we are talking about one bottle each, hardly a party.
We get back to the camp and have our beer in the yard – Thuan, Jake and Julie join in.
The afternoon classes take place and I am very sad to shortly be saying farewell to my pupils.

They were a little wild today and I had to bribe them with ‘Beyoncé halo’ to keep them focused. They love this song, especially the wooohooo bit at the chorus.
Amusingly, one of the girls suggests that I am fat and won’t stop saying it. I am defended by one of my star pupils who says “she isn’t fat, she is sexy”, although I’m not sure which the worst insult is…

I am incredibly close to all my pupils now and, indeed, to all the individuals I have had the pleasure to meet in Ayiti. I am loving every second of it and really am struggling with the idea of leaving this place to go home. I am emotionally fulfilled daily and feel that I am able to contribute to the improvement of daily life for others in some way, not matter how small. I am also relishing the actual physical activities that I have to undertake each day. I am not making a massive difference but my duties are purposeful. My previous world of lists and emails and schedules seems unfamiliar and distant and I get a real feeling that this is what I should be doing with my life. My husband is such a brilliant man that only when I step out of his shadow am I fully able to see myself and realise that I had been missing this part of me; this is my chance to be me again, this is my moment.