Grace Goin' On

A few weeks ago eighty-five children way up in the mountains of La Gonave completed their very first year of school. Ever. They started with nothing, essentially. To house it, we found a dilapidated and abandoned, tiny old church building that was pretty much unsafe to be in. The walls were crumbling and the roof, well, you didn’t want to stand under it. Most of the village's children were sickly and malnourished, which is what happens when you don't eat every day.

The village desperately wanted a school. We told them that if they could make the building safe, we would provide them with some supplies for the task. Inspired, they cut the walls down to half their original height and stripped the roof of everything but its wooden frames. We found the biggest, heaviest tarp we could find for a roof, the kind semi trucks use to haul loads. They partitioned it off the inside. They built benches. They built blackboards. We spent very few dollars to ready the structure. A thousand dollars at most. We would pour more into people.

We found capable and energetic teachers and a very good principal. We figured out how to provide the children with a meal every day. We registered the school with local island jurisdictions. We provided them with basic supplies for conducting this place of learning. We provided them with a flag and a school bell. Children wore uniforms made right there on the island. They chose blue as their color.

In form, they were unlike any other school. Their building, barely a building. Except for their benches and chalkboard, their classrooms were bare of things that would look like a place where learning happens.

In function, they were as much a school as any other school in the world. They met every day. The teachers wore dresses and ties. They took attendance. They administered tests. They issued report cards. Learning happened.

And not just the kids! We have learned, too, the village and us. We have learned how to listen and cooperate and be patient and forgive. Turns out, learning is not the only thing that has happened in one village in the mountains.

Quite a bit of grace is goin' on, too.

*Makochon’s school is growing this year, in both function and form. A fourth grade class is being added and the village is looking for a site where they can build a new school.

Pikamabe

La Gonave.  37 miles long by 9 miles wide.
Home to more than 100,000 people.

There is, on La Gonave’s far western parts, a tiny village. They call it Pikamabe. Don’t know if it’s spelled right but that’s how it sounds. Peek-a-maybe. A man from Pikamabe showed up at the Starfysh house a few weeks ago to ask if we could give them some water filters, that they had had several cases of cholera in their village. It happened that Freddy, our teams coordinator had just arrived on the island to work on the island for a week, bringing with him four Michiganders.

It took four hours to get there from Anse-a-Galets where our house is located. It wouldn’t take that long on 4-wheeler ATV’s or on motorcycles, but in the truck we have to go so much slower because we can’t dodge the gigantic rocks and crevices like we can on the small vehicles. They journey was 32 miles each way, a lot of which was winding roads and turns. Nevertheless... 32 miles, 4 hours.

They told our group that no outsiders had ever come to their village. No doubt! Not on any map, Pikamabe is in the middle of nowhere. But there it was. And there they were, these precious people whom, I am sure, God has always known.

After the filters were installed and the village served our crew up a meal of goat, rice and beans, the village then presented us with a goat, in appreciation for our visit.  I’m not just sure what they appreciated more: the filters or the fact that we came.

I think it was mainly just because we came.

There’s just something about sheer presence. Showing up. Letting them know that someone knows who and where they are, and that they are not alone on this planet.

Gotta hunch we’ll be back.