Camp d’Amitie
Camp d'Amitie
This past week, we traded our GPS device and our verbal autopsies in for a box of chalk and a pile of sticks…
Due to damages, chaos, and fear of re-entering any building with a roof during the weeks following the goudou goudou, many Haitian schools put their classes on hold. To make up for the missed time, most schools extended their school year well into the summer. As a matter of fact, most of the schools are just now, halfway through July, wrapping up the 2009-2010 school year.
Now that official classes are no longer in session at Petit Vilage, they have begun hosting “Camp d’Amitie” (Friendship Camp) for children ranging from ages 3-18. At camp, the children spend most of their time singing, dancing, and playing games. When Julie offered to teach ballet at the camp, Bernadette (the woman who was coordinating the camp) was thrilled! There were way too many children at the camp for Julie to try to teach all of them at once, so Shilpa, Julie, and I split the children, roughly according to age, among ourselves. Shilpa didn’t share Julie’s passion for or experience with ballet, so she taught her group Raas, a type of Indian dance where the dancers perform repeated rhythmic movements with sticks… at least until the campers decided that they preferred breaking the sticks to dancing with them…
Those of you who know me might assume that I taught my group salsa… not quite…
Teaching ballet to three year olds is one thing, but I wasn’t sure how happy parents would be when their children returned home from camp dancing salsa. Had I known at the time that they start teaching the children Kompa, a Haitian partner dance that is very similar to merengue, before they even begin kindergarten, I still do not think I would have elected to teach salsa. Salsa is hard enough to teach to adults…when the teacher and students speak the same language…and because we only had two translators (Eunide and Robinson came to camp with us) and three different groups, one group did not have the aid of a translator.
Mwen rele Pwofese Jilia
Sooooo…the only rule for my group was that only English was to be spoken… Mwen rele Pwofese Jilia, epitou nap aprann angle jodiya… (My name is Professor Julia, and we are learning English today). Ok, so that wasn’t entirely true. I was actually surprised to realize how much Creole we have learned just by being here in Haiti. It certainly helps that we live with a Haitian family, and that our work here requires that we speak in Creole (with the help of Eunide and Robinson) with Haitians each and every day. I soon realized that I had acquired at least enough Creole to teach the Abc’s, 123′s, Hello and How are you’s, body parts, foods, colors, etc.
A few of my students... Edison is the one wearing the white jersey
Many of my students have had exposure to English as part of their school curriculum. In response to one of my questions during class, Edison, one of my better students explained to me in very rapid Creole that he could understand me only if I spoke very slowly. When I explained to him that I could only understand him if he spoke Creole very slowly, it was as if all of us had this great epiphany (which seems as though it should have been much more obvious to both sides). We all tried to be more conscious of our enunciation of words and rate of speaking.
Two of Julie's favorite students
The Haitian version of Tug-of-war...I still don't really understand the rules. Eunide beat me by running at me. I thought I had won because I pulled her towards me, but she was the one who was awarded a tootsie roll?
Musical chairs to Kompa music
"Jackie Chan" (as his insisted that we call him...this child also claimed to be my husband?) and Robinson with the "ti machin" that the campers gave him as a birthday present
Bernadette asking the kids questions at camp. Correct answers earn candy!
My camp friend at "Friendship Camp"
