Day 27: In A Bubble

Today was my last day of rubbling. There was much I could’ve done with the baby orphanage, helping to move the re-structuring process along, but I felt I needed one last afternoon swinging a sledge hammer and pushing a wheelbarrow. It was a new site we went to and the team leader who was in charge on my very first day of rubbling was now also in charge on my last – it felt very appropriate. And like my first day, she called on me to speak with the homeowner, even though there was a better French speaker on the team than myself. Turned out that the homeowner did not speak French, only Creole, so I had to communicate with her solely in Creole. If pride is what I felt for my accomplishment on the first day for making use of my language, then this was something far beyond that. I had come so far in Creole, enough so to have a conversation (as minimal and George of the Jungle it was) with a local woman. It was a great way to end my time moving rubble.

...

I am beside myself about the orphanage this afternoon. It was the best day we have had in the month I have been here. I could not have asked for more, I could not have been happier to leave any other way. It was as if they knew this was my last time and they wanted to make it as special as possible.

We arrived at the tent with the rain, which most times keeps a good chunk of the children from attending. With such a small group and the rain falling, we decided not to split the children up and to do a full class lesson inside. Half way through the lesson as the rain subsided the tent quickly began to fill. As I mentioned in earlier posts, though the tent is meant for the orphanage the other children (and many adults) from around the neighborhood trickle in, filtering their way throughout the orphans. By the time I was ready for the paint lesson there were over 55 children, 15 volunteers, and at least 15 local adults. That’s almost 100 people in a tent meant for around 20 – 30 people with 4 tables that seat maybe 6 children squished, 8 children when they sit on each other’s laps. That’s a lot of people and not a lot of space. But…it worked. It made it even more amazing.

For my last day I really wanted to do a fun activity. My children back home always loved to paint, especially because I loved to paint with them. Today we used watercolors to paint an ocean sea with a boat (we had just learned modes of transportation) and some sort of depiction of weather (last week’s lesson.) We also took a few minutes to talk about Claude Monet. 55 Haitian children in bare feet with dirty face repeated “Claude Monet” with enthusiasm, and my heart soared.

If you ever spent more than a minute with a child you can imagine the excitement and mayhem of giving that many children something as fantastic and special as a paintbrush and paint. The tables weren’t large enough for all the paper, at least every three children shared one set of paint, and half of the children sat on a blanket on the rubble floor trying to paint in their laps. You couldn’t move around the tent. And the sheer volume of people made for an extremely noisy working environment. You can’t paint with that much noise. I also cringe at the thought of losing my class to racket. Mid-painting I called for everyone’s attention and with the help of all the volunteers and our quiet symbol we were able to stop all the children mid-stroke and get their attention. Quite a feat, believe me.

Normally I leave the orphanage hoarse, having spent the whole time with a loud voice that will reach even the child in the back corner of the tent. This was the first time I lowered my voice. I talked no higher than a whisper and our translator did the same. The surprise of a soft voice and the silence emanating from everyone else brought an extreme calm to this 100-person tent. “When you paint,” I explained, “imagine you are in a bubble. In that bubble it is just you and your creativity. No one can touch you or disturb you. You are free to paint whatever you want.” The children made imaginary bubbles. And then I told them to stay in that bubble so that they - and everyone else - could paint the best they possibly could. For 30 minutes the sound level hardly rose over a peep. I looked around at the massive amounts of bodies in the tiny space, saw them all hard at work lost in their own imagination, and my face glowed with joy. Pure and utter joy. A joy you cannot buy. A joy you cannot define. A joy that comes only now and then like a rainbow after a storm. You have to catch it and hold it in your heart forever because its life is short lived, but its imprint is eternal.

The woman next door who holds our tables for us between classes came over for the entire lesson and after we exchanged numbers. We hugged several times and neither of us wanted to leave. My favorite little boy who is partially mentally disabled, showed up for the first time in weeks. Again, he must’ve known I was leaving. I hugged him tightly; so proud of all the work he had done today, so proud of his beautiful spirit. His smile, the brightest I have ever seen, was a sign of the hope for the future. I think about his future and how hard it will be for him; Haiti does not have any resources for children with disabilities and no education on the subject (to have a disability is a curse- most likely the reason he is an orphan, having been abandoned.) My heart breaks for the rough life he will have. But in that moment, his face beaming and his hand in mind, I took in only his soul and his smile and I prayed God keeps His hand on him until He calls him home.

We climbed on the taptap all 15 of us, me standing on the bumper gripping the bed door tightly with one hand and waving ecstatically with the other. A little boy hobbled after us, waving and smiling for about 100 feet and then fell back. The taptap turned the corner, leaving a piece of my heart right there with the orphan children of Leogane. I choked back the tears – today was too beautiful to cry, even if they were tears of joy.