Day of Mourning

Around the city, Haitians have gathered at churches, in camps and on street sides to pray, chant, and dance. For the first time in a month, we are taking some time to remember and reflect.

This last week has been insanely busy. We have started constructing the first of our 10 child-friendly spaces (CFSs), and as of this morning, we are ready to begin 3 more on Monday. We are working closely with the community leaders in each IDP camp to identify appropriate space, assess chidren's needs and find potential childcare providers. The biggest challenge in setting up these CFSs is finding space. The camps are obviously very crowded, so a lot of preparation will be needed to clear a clean, healing space to set up tents.

Each CFS will serve anywhere from 250-500 children, aged 5-12. The CFSs will provide an opportunity for children to restore some normalcy to their lives through educational play. We will sing, dance, paint, do yoga, play sports, etc! The community will lead each CFS with our support. Some figures indicate that there are over 300,000 displaced children, and with the coming rainy season there will be even more. Although 10 CFSs only scratch the surface, I'm hoping to learn and create structures and systems to make the process easily replicable.

This morning I had an inspiring meeting with the local committee leaders in the camp of Bureau de Mines. Three of our AMURT animators (a Haitian term used for Community Organizers) talked with the local committee leaders and together we identified all of the needs to get this project started by Monday. Since I don't speak Creole yet, we communicated in a funky melange of English, French, Spanish and Creole. It worked and now we are on our way.

I think of my FSS and IHS students often when I walk around the camps and see children the same age. One of my advisees gave me a beautiful dragonfly pin the day before I came to Haiti, and it reminds me how interconnected we all are and in uncertain times, we must fly fearlessly.