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Over Thanksgiving, I went with four other students from Bishop Ireton to Louverture Cleary School, our sister school. We spent a week in Haiti at LCS working with the students and teachers there. We helped with composting, painting, and worked on the rooftop garden in the mornings. In the afternoon, we helped the students practice for their first play production that was held at the end of the week. As tiring as the physical work was and I as much as I had doubted my ability to live up to what I thought was expected of me, it was honestly one of the best weeks of my life.
After hearing so much about LCS and preparing for this trip for so long, just finally seeing the school was an amazing experience in itself. I had wanted so badly to come help and do something for the students, and to finally be there was so exciting. It was much nicer than I expected a school in Haiti to be, but then I remembered, it is probably one of the nicer places in the country. The school is so open and colorful, and even though it may not have all the amenities of mine at home, I really thought it was a wonderful place to be.
The students are some of the friendliest people I have ever met. They all seem to be so full of life; they are always dancing and singing. When we came to visit the classes they would always ask us to sing or dance for them. This was so funny to me because I could never imagine being asked that by anyone I’m meeting here in the U.S., but it seemed like such a usual thing for them. I thought how amazing it was for them to be so happy considering conditions they live in; I thought about all the people I know, including myself, who have so much and are still dissatisfied. I sometimes wish that life could be simpler here at home, it would be nice to not feel the need to always keep up with the joneses and just be happy.
Throughout the week, I realized that even though I felt I needed to live up to some high expectations, it really was not about what I accomplished. I think I thought that my week at Louverture Cleary would make some kind of tremendous impact on the school and the students there, but really life at LCS had been happening before I got there and has continued since I left. My week there really had nothing to do with me and the work I did there was not so amazing, because it is what the students and teachers do everyday. I still think that what I did was important and that it did help, but I understand that my work just helped continue something great that is much bigger than myself.
At the end of the week no one in my group seemed ready to leave quite yet. Even though we were taking cold showers, not able to flush the toilet, and couldn’t watch T.V., I think we all felt much happier than we did with all our “stuff” at home. The fact that I could be so happy in what seemed like such horrible conditions is one of the things that has affected me most. I have learned to appreciate what I have a lot more and to try to live a little simpler.