Classes cancelled due to Haitian techno

On Monday, about 10 minutes into the beginner English class, very loud Haitian reggae-techno started blaring from some very large speakers outside the classroom. Monday was the first day of a soccer tournament at OFCB. Different teams from the area (guys around 14-17 years old) have formed to play in the tournament which was organized by the people at OFCB. And all of the games are played on the court outside the classrooms, during the times that all my classes are scheduled, so it gets way too loud for classes. On Monday, I thought it was kind of funny that class had to be cancelled due to loud reggae-techno, but it wasn't until Tuesday that I was told that Monday's game was part of a tournament. The tournament was organized by people at OFCB, people that I see everyday, but no one thought it important to tell me that there would be a soccer tournament during class time every day for a while (I still haven't gotten any one to tell me when the tournament is over). When I asked Actionnel about what I should do about classes, he said cancelling class for a week wouldn't be a bad thing. He just said "Well, you know we love soccer." I wasn't upset about classes being cancelled, but I wish I had had time to tell the students there wouldn't be class. One of the students from the intermediate class told me today that he had walked really far down from the mountains in order to attend the class, and when I told him that class was cancelled because of the soccer tournament, he looked pretty pissed. I have told all the students that I have seen that classes will resume on Friday in the OFCB church but this will probably be pretty difficult. The church gets really, really hot during the day, plus a lot of the students will probably want to go watch the game, plus there will be reggae-techno in the background.

So, I haven't had anything to do this week. When I found out about the soccer tournament, I was much more upset about the prospect of having nothing to do all week than at classes being cancelled. My morning walks have gotten longer, and I have been reading a lot more, and have been playing my guitar a lot more, and have been taking longer naps, but none of this has cured the boredom. Hopefully, things will change later this week. I was talking to Amilor today about the "language lab", which was supposed to be a center for students to study languages with instructional audiocassetes and stuff. Some church in the States apparently donated a lot of listening equipment and books and stuff, but everything has just been sitting for months in boxes in the old church building. I've looked in the windows of the old building and everything looks like a mess inside, but a fixable mess. I am hoping Demilsaint, who is supposed to be in charge of getting the lab up and running, will let me take a crack at trying to clean the building out and set up the equipment. The lab would definitely be useful for the students at the school, plus it would give me something to do for a couple days and end the boredom.

(the OFCB team)

Yesterday was more difficult than most days. I was walking back up to Mont Kabwit and was stopped by a guy working in his field. He went on an extended rant about life in Bayonnais in very rapid Creole (I asked him to slow down a little, but that didn't work). I didn't catch most of it, but I caught enough. He said life is hard in Bayonnais. He said his family was hungry, and that many members of his family had died. He said that his land wasn't always fertile but that he prayed to God every day for lots of rain. And some seasons were plentiful enough to feed his family, and some seasons weren't. But that that's just the way things were. And then he ended his rant with a very direct question, "And what are you going to do to help us?" and stood there waiting for my answer. And I could tell that he wasn't asking for a handout or anything, he just wanted a real, genuine answer. It was like he was testing me, fully conscious of what he was doing. And I didn't really have an answer, partially because my Creole isn't good enough to give an adequate response, but mostly because I just didn't have an answer. But he could tell that I understood that I didn't have an answer, or maybe that there wasn't any answer to give, and that was enough for him. I had answered his question in some way or another.

If everyone in Bayonnais was like that farmer that I met yesterday, I think things would be a lot easier to understand. He knew things were tough, but he was content with things anyway. He was hopeful for the future despite being fully conscious that things could always get worse. He prayed to God and his prayers were rarely answered, but he didn't hold a grudge. I don't think I will fully understand his mindset while I'm here, and may never understand it given I haven't gone through what he's gone through in his lifetime. But it is somewhat easier trying to understand him than trying to understand most others in Bayonnais because you could tell he understood all the facts, or at least lived gracefully with those he didn't understand. Not everyone responds to suffering in the same way. There are a lot of very bitter people in Bayonnais (and maybe they are rightfully bitter) and there are a lot of very joyful people here. Bayonnais is like a melting pot of the human condition. All of the ups and downs are accentuated and exaggerated to ridiculous proportions (or at least they seem so from where i'm coming from). And some people are chewed up and spat out, but there are others that take the extreme in their stride. Maybe when I wonder why people respond differently to suffering in Bayonnais, I am really asking myself what I would be like if I was in their situation. More than half my time in Bayonnais is over, and I'm beginning to realize that I don't want to spend what time I have left endlessly dwelling on those that have been spat out. There are things that I can change, and things I can't. I can learn more from this farmer.

"Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future."
Ecclesiastes 7