School Life

There were a few special events in the school in the last few weeks. Except for that, the school is running and dealing with problems similar to other schools around the world: discipline, maintenance etc.

Our special events include:

A valentine party (can’t find photos)

Preparing carnival:

School decorated - the day before

And celebrating it:

Kindergarten (4 years old)

School yard

Games

Dances (skirts made of torn rice bags)



Parade



And the first computer literacy lessons to the teachers. We’re hoping to get more computers and be able to give lessons to students as well.

If anyone is wondering, the lesson was delivered in bad creole.

Besides that, we’ve finally got electricity and internet in the school, and are building an arts workshop so more organized art lessons will start next week.

What power? Power of Voodoo

On our first night in Jacmel, we were invited to a voodoo ceremony in a near by village. The Haitians are almost all Christians, but almost everyone believes in voodoo at some level and there is a large precentage of people that practice it regularly and a lot of people will go to consult the voodoo priest on health and other issues. There are people that practice ‘good’ voodoo that can help cure illness and stuff, and people that practice ‘bad’ voodoo in which curses are put on people making them ill, dead or zombie. A lot of people that become ill believe that it’s a curse that somebody put on them. Almost everybody we talked to about the subject (university students, business men, etc) has a story in which they saw a voodoo curse in action.

The way to the ceremony increased the effect of it. It was located in a village, and after crossing a river (needless to say – without a bridge), a motorcycle waited to take us to the venue of the ceremony.

There was a lot of dancing and a priest that encouraged people to continue.

The ‘church’ had some strange symbols.

The highlight of the ceremony was a painting made with sand on the floor (while everyone dancing in the background), that was then totally erased by a group of dancers that danced on it.

Many of the pictures are fuzzy. Probably a curse.

Carnival

Carnival is considered by some Haitians as the biggest holiday of the year. In the past few decades it has changed from a costume and parade event into a huge-party-in-the-streets event. It seems to me that this allientated some of the previous participants and carnival is no longer for everybody. But – it’s still a huge attraction. The official carnival in Port-au-Prince is 3 days. This year, due to unsolved housing problems, the organizers were not able to build stands for spectators (as the usual place is occupied by tents) and only a few exist. Some artists preferred to skip the celebrations, and the route was cut short. On the first day we bought a ticket to one of the few stands that did exist and celebrated carnival from close, but from a safe distance. An unbelievably strong carribean rain just went the party was starting to pick up sent most if not all the celebrators back home early. No pictures as we took nothing with us when we went out to avoid pick pocketers.

Last week we went to Jacmel. The Jacmel carnival is a week before the big one, and is considered to be a friendlier ‘old-style’ event. We drove to Jacmel a couple of days before carnival day (in Jacmel it’s just one day) and spent most of the time in a beach house that belongs to a friend of a friend.

The carnival itself was as promised. Friendly, safe with a parade, people of all ages participating and happy dancing in the streets. Jacmel in general is clean, calm and friendly and I liked it a lot.