The Creole word for a demonstration is “manifestasyon”. It’s the word used to describe the times that people take to the streets to protest. They might be objecting to the murder of a popular figure or the high price of various commodities or the firing of a university official or the presence of U.N. peacekeepers. Monday evening, for example, crowds converged on a luxury hotel in Pétion-Ville called the Hotel Montana. It had been used as the headquarters both for the peacekeeping mission and the electoral council. Hotel management was intimidated enough to tell both the U.N. and the council to set up residence elsewhere.

Yesterday, I had to walk through one demonstration, and this morning demonstrators are in the street outside Frémy’s home in Darbonne, where I am as I write. The most striking thing, perhaps, about the two demonstrations is how similar they were. It’s surprising because the reasons for the two demonstrations, though they were both focused on the February 7th elections, were so different.

Since last Friday at least, Haitians have been anxiously awaiting the results of the elections. Voting went splendidly on Tuesday, with Haitians all over the country making great sacrifices so that they could participate in elections that were long overdue. I have written about how well they went in the corner of Lagonav where I spent election day – See: AnElectionAfterall – and as I returned to Pòtoprens on Saturday I learned that voting had gone just as well in other areas. The electoral council had said that results would take three days to tabulate.

From the start, though, it seemed clear that René Préval was certain of a large victory. He was president from 1995-2000, between the two interrupted terms of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Préval entered the election campaign relatively late in the game, and he didn’t do a lot of campaigning, but the sector of the population that had supported Aristide – the poor – got almost uniformly behind him. They are the large majority in Haiti, so if they vote and vote together, their candidate cannot fail to win. And they have been voting. Their candidates – whether Aristide or Préval – have won every successful election since the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.

If Aristide was known for his enchanting rhetoric, for his extraordinary ability to put a dream into memorable words, Préval is known for straight, simple talk. When he did finally hit the campaign trail, his stump speech was the farthest thing from what you’d expect from a populist. He would ask large crowds to raise their hands if they were unemployed. In Haiti, where unemployment is said to be over 60%, hundreds or thousands would raise their hands and cheer. And then Préval would say: “Listen carefully to what I’m telling you: I cannot promise you I’ll create employment for you. That’s not what a government does. I will try to create a secure and stable country where the private sector can invest. They are the ones who can create jobs.” His seeming frankness appears to be part of what has made him popular.

The difference in style between Préval and Aristide is clear from the emblems each has chosen for the political alliances they’ve led. These emblems are important not only because they crystallize a message but also because many voters lack reading skills so that it is by the emblems they vote, especially for candidates below the presidency whose pictures they may not be able to identify. Aristide’s emblem is brilliant. It’s “bo tab la”, a picture of a small table with chairs. It means “a place at the table”, and it’s a clever way to suggest that Haiti’s poor want their share, too. Préval’s is much less sophisticated. It’s “lespwa”, or “hope”, and the picture that accompanies it is of a healthy, green leaf.

The only real question as the votes were being tabulated was not whether Préval had one, but whether he had won the absolute majority he would need to avoid a March 19th run-off with the second-place finisher. It would be a tough row to hoe, because with 34 candidates opposing him each would need to average only 1.5% of the vote to made a second ballot necessary. Even so, Préval’s margin of victory seemed certain to be large.

But on Friday, only very partial results were released. More were released Saturday and Sunday, with Préval hovering the weekend at around 50%, briefly climbing to 52% Saturday night before dropping to 49% and then 48% percent on Sunday. And then the counting stopped.

Accusations of fraud began to surface. Even within the electoral commission, statements were made by some members suggesting that other members were manipulating the count to ensure that a second ballot would be required. Those attempting to manipulate the vote might have hoped that, if they could just get the opposition to Préval down to one candidate, they might be able to beat him head-to-head.

On Monday, things started to heat up. Préval’s supporters took to the streets in Pòtoprens, fearing that the election was being stolen from them. Throughout the day, various leaders asked Préval to make a statement, telling his supporters to quiet down, but he declined, saying that he was not the master of the Haitian people and that he would need to consult with other members of his political organization before he could issue a statement.

That evening, his supporters demonstrated outside the Hotel Montana. He finally made a statement, saying that he and his colleagues believed there to have been inaccuracies and downright cheating in the counting of ballots, that he believed he had the absolute majority he needed to take office without a second ballot, and that he would make certain that his team very closely watched the final tabulation to ensure its accuracy.

Tuesday was very quiet. I had been in the countryside on Monday, but I had to spend Tuesday doing some work and running some errands in Pòtoprens. I got in and out of the city without any difficulty, except finding busses and trucks that were on the road. Apparently, Préval’s statement had convinced his supporters to wait and see.

But Tuesday evening news broke that ballot boxes and ballots had been discovered partially burned in an area north of Pòtoprens where trash is left. It’s not yet clear what the stuff was doing there, but fears of fraud became more urgent, and Wednesday Préval’s supporters shut down Pòtoprens by taking to the street.

Wednesday afternoon, I had to get from Fondwa, in the mountains between Léogane and Jacmel, to Darbonne, where I had work scheduled with Frémy on Thursday. The problem was, the route between Jacmel and Léogane was blanch, or empty. The trucks and busses that work it were nowhere to be seen. Eventually, I got a ride from a guy driving his own car across the mountains toward Tigwav. When we got to the base of the mountain road, at Kafou Difò, he would turn south and I would head north, but at least that would get me part of the way. In the worst case, I figured I could walk from there to Frémy’s in two or three hours.

I headed on foot towards Léogane, and that’s where I came across the first demonstration. Protesters had blocked the road – one of Haiti’s main highways – carrying posters and banners with pictures of Préval and his party’s emblem. They were dancing and singing. To say that they were peaceful doesn’t go nearly far enough. They were downright friendly, inviting me to join them, chatting with me as I made my hurried way. And it’s worth emphasizing this point because, especially for Haitians that don’t know me or what I am doing here, I can’t help but represent the same foreigners whom they believed to be complicit in the effort to steal the election from them.

They understood my hurry, and did not hinder me as I made my way. When I got sufficiently in front of them, I found a working tap-tap and made my way to Darbonne without further incident. I spent the night at Frémy’s. I heard news of the day’s protests in Pòtoprens, and they had been uniformly peaceful.

When I got up Thursday morning, I learned that Préval had been declared winner of the first ballot and given 51% of the vote. The official announcement was made in the middle of the night. I headed to downtown Darbonne as I always do first thing when I stay at Frémy’s, to drink coffee at Jaklèn’s. She’s a coffee merchant in the morning and serves beans and rice later in the day.

Heading to Jaklèn’s, which is at the tap-tap station in downtown Darbonne, I came across the second demonstration. The street was full of Préval fans, chanting his name and dancing. This time they weren’t protesting fraud, but celebrating his victory. The street party continued for a couple of hours.

I started to think about what someone who didn’t understand Creole and didn’t know what it was about might have made of it all. The two events resembled nothing more than celebrations. With Kanaval, or Mardi Gras, right around the corner, they could both have appeared to be warm-up parties, preparations for the main event.

Part of me thinks that the joyousness even in Wednesday’s protest reflected something fundamentally Haitian: the ability to be cheerful at moments of discontent. One of the ways that Haitians react when they hear about a misfortune, or see someone in pain, is by laughing. It has taken me some getting used to, but I’m beginning to see the wisdom in such acceptance.

But part of me thinks that something very different was at work this time. It was as though, even as they protested against what they believed to be fraud in the making, they knew that they would win out in the end.

The confidence they seem to have in Préval gives reason for optimism. If the powerful sectors in Haiti and abroad that oppose him can be convinced to accept his victory and work with him for the next five years, Haiti might finally begin to make the progress that his ally, Aristide, promised years ago: “From misery to poverty with dignity.”

Yayi and Kaki

I’ve wanted very badly to share this picture of Yayi and Kaki ever since I took it a few weeks ago. They are from Upper Glo, the steeply sloping collection of small clusters of homes across the road from the wealthier cluster, or lakou, I live in.

The boys say that they are good friends. When I asked them what that means to them, they thought for a minute. Then Kaki, who’s on the right, said “Si m wè yon moun k ap bay Yayi yon kou, m ap tou antre.” That means that if he saw someone hitting Yayi he would jump right in. I have mixed feelings about the sentiment. I’m glad that they have each other to depend on, but I’m sorry that fighting was the first thing that popped into Kaki’s mind.

Fortunately, that’s not generally what they’re doing when I see them. I see them when they come down to the water source by the great mapou tree in front of our lakou. Fetching water is an important chore around where I live. Larger kids and adults will come to the source with five or seven-gallon buckets. Littler children come with gallon jugs. The smallest bring one jug, larger kids bring two or three, until they are big enough to carry a bucket instead.

As important as the chore is, it does not tend, for the children, to be very business-like. They’ll spend a good deal of time at the clearing just playing before they fill their jugs and head home. One of them might have a ball or a handful of marbles or some elastic bands. These are toys of choice. But an upripe grapefruit or a bundle of rags can substitute for a ball, and games like tag can be played without any equipment at all.

The other place I see them is in our lakou, where they will do small chores for various of the households. They might get a couple of pennies for their trouble, but they are more likely to just get a thank you and bite to eat, which seems fine with them. They might sweep or carry small loads of sand or rocks for construction, and though they can often be counted on to get their little tasks done, they are no more serious about their work here than they are under the mapou. Kaki in particular is quite the clown, and he seems to like nothing more than to make Yayi – and anyone else who is willing to look at him – laugh.

As I was thinking about this photo, I began asking myself why it seemed so important to share it. I wanted to figure out something that I could say about it. The fact that the boys are cute hardly seemed reason enough. After all, it doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with my work.

But the more I thought about Yayi and Kaki, the more I realized that their relationship to the various bits of work that they do sheds light on my relationship to mine.

Two facts have pushed me towards thinking about my relationship with my work these days. On one hand, I have a truly outstanding colleague at Shimer who has decided to take a leave of absence from teaching because, at least in part, he would like to be able to make his non-working life more interesting. When I say that the person I’m thinking of is “outstanding,” I mean the word literally. My colleagues at Shimer are all very good, but this one stands out for his thoughtfulness, his diligence, and his openness to learning. He’s a model. On the other hand, I’ve been in conversation recently with a group in the town where I grew up that is willing to have me come and speak to them about my life in Haiti. That group seems at least as interested in the life I live among my Haitian friends and colleagues as it is in the particular educational work that I came to do.

The latter point was, at first, a little surprising to me. I think of myself as a classroom teacher. It’s true that a lot of my activity in Haiti has more to do with helping other teachers establish conditions within which they can work in a classroom – the collaboration with Fonkoze is only the most extreme example of this – than it has to do with any direct contact between me and students. Even so, helping shape classrooms is the heart of what I think I do.

At the same time, I’ve always taken the name that Frémy and I gave our project quite seriously. We call it the Apprenticeship in Alternative Education, and though “apprenticeship” is slightly misleading as a translation of the Creole word, “aprantisaj,” that Frémy initially chose, it succeeds nonetheless in putting emphasis in the right place. I am in Haiti, first and foremost, as a learner. It is because I am learning that I think I can help others do the same.

But when I think of what I am learner here and how and in what situations I am learning, then the line between what I might, according to some conventions, identify as my work and what I would identify as my private life begins to blur. It loses its meaning. Because surely I’m as much of a learner in conversations with people like Yayi and Keki as I am when I’m trying to figure out an essay by Piaget with colleagues at the Matenwa Community Learning Center or when I’m helping to work out a budget for educational programs with colleagues at Fonkoze.

And I have the good fortune to be able to make the same claim the other way around: Just as I can see my everyday life as part of my work as a learner, I can also see what might conventionally be called my job as a part of my everyday life. I do not leave my home life to go to work, nor do I leave work to go home. It is one life.

Concepts like “time off” and “overtime” and “vacation” only make sense if you are selling your time to someone who’s assignng you to do something you’d rather not do. Make no mistake: I know perfectly well that there are lots of reasons why someone might choose to or might have to do this. But, at least right now, it’s not something I have to do.

My work in Haiti has a lot in common with the trips to the water source that Yayi and Kaki make. It’s very had to distinguish it from play, and I can’t think of any reason that I should.

Over the course of the last weeks in January, it began to seem increasingly likely that there would be an election in Haiti.

This is an odd claim for an American to make. The regularity of our own democratic processes means that the question as to whether they’ll be an election never arises. We can tend to be apathetic as election season rolls around. We might be happy or unhappy with the way elections go. Our candidates might win or they might lose. We can distrust an election’s results; we can even doubt the democracy of our democracy. But no one ever has to wonder whether an election will take place. On Tuesday, November 4, 2036 – just to pick an example – I’m pretty sure that Americans will be voting for a president, a set of representatives, and some senators. Nothing like that is really certain this far in advance, but it is pretty likely. There’s even a chance that I’ll participate.

But Haiti has no such history of regular elections. That’s not to say that there haven’t been elections. There have. Presidents have come and gone, some of them elected. Few, however, have completed their constitutionally fixed term and handed their authority over to an elected successor. The country has endured over thirty violent changes in government in the 202 years since it won its independence.

The latest occurred at the end of February 2004, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from the presidency for the second time. He had been overthrown once early in his first term, in 1991, but returned from exile in 1994 to complete the term. He then handed his office over on schedule to Rene Preval, who was elected to replace him, in 1995. In 2000, he ran again and won.

Exactly what then happened in February 2004 is a matter of controversy. What’s certain is that there were heavily armed groups of irregulars violently approaching Pótoprens from the countryside – Haiti has no regular army – and that demonstrators had taken to the streets in Pótoprens. President Aristide went into exile in South Africa, where he remains. This is true though he also remains a popular figure – perhaps the most popular figure – in Haitian politics.

Since he departed, Haiti has been governed by a Provisional President and Provisional Prime Minister whose constitutional mandates – to organize new elections within three months and then step down – expired over a year ago. Elections had been scheduled three times since last November, but each time they had been cancelled and a new date set.

So it was hard not to retain a degree of skepticism as February 7, the most recently established date, approached. And when we got to the polls at about 6:15 AM, fifteen minutes after they were supposed to open, and found them still closed, and when 7:00 and then 8:00 came and went and they still hadn’t opened, one had to wonder.

My colleagues’ polling place was in Zetwa, roughly a two-hour hike down the mountain from Matenwa. At 3:30 AM, the Matenwa school’s conch sounded. The conch has great value as a symbol in Haiti. The slaves who were organizing themselves into what would become the successful war of independence from the French used the conch to announce the beginning of their uprising. The famous statue of an escaped slave in Pòtoprens shows him with a large conch in hand. In Matenwa, a small boy called Ti Youyout had been asked to blow the school’s conch to awaken prospective voters so that they could prepare to hike down the mountain. A group of us had agreed to meet at the school at 4:00 and to set out together. Folks were anxious to get into line and vote, and I wanted to walk down with the voters and take in the polling place ambience.

The voters’ enthusiasm was striking. If someone had told me six months ago that the Haitians I know would be so determined to vote, I wouldn’t have believed them. Most of the people I was talking to back then were professing a lack of interest, and I couldn’t really blame them. What many said was that they had elected the president they wanted – Aristide – and that he had been taken from them. They didn’t see the point of choosing their own president if their choice could then be reversed by powers, within the country and abroad, that were looking after their own interests.

As plans for the election unfolded, voting only seemed to get harder, in at least two ways. First, acquiring the new national identity card that doubles as a voter ID turned out to be a nuisance. One had to stand in a long line – perhaps hours long – both to apply for the card and then to pick it up when it became available. For folks in the countryside, there might be a long walk just to get to where application for a card could be made. Production and distribution of the cards was slow – this was one major reason that elections were delayed several times. Even now, there are those who never received their cards.

Second, a decision was made to minimize the number of polling places. It was argued that this would maximize national and international observers’ ability to keep an eye on things, to assure that voting was both fair and safe. But it also meant that many people would have to walk for hours to cast their votes. Our two hour walk from Matenwa to Zetwa was typical on Lagonav. Plenty of people had to walk farther than that.

And when people started picking up their registration cards, many discovered that they had been registered to vote a long way from their home, even if there was a polling place nearby. For example, most residents of Zetwa, where my friends voted, had been sent to vote in Zabriko, a long uphill walk for them. Most of my neighbors back in Ka Glo had been sent to Fermat he, either a hard two-hour hike along mountain paths or an even longer trip down into Pétion-Ville, where one could get transportation up the Fermat he road.

But people seemed really determined to vote. They put up with the long walks, the waiting. They ignored their own skepticism. When our group got to Zetwa at 6:15 or so, long lines had already formed, and the lines did not noticeably diminish as the first hours passed without a sign that the polling stations would open.

Finally, all but one of them did open. The organizers decided that the best way to reduce the number of voting sites would be to set up multiple polling stations at single sites. So there were eight separate sites in Zetwa all in the same school, and by 9:00 all but one of the lines was very slowly moving.

The eighth station hadn’t opened by 11:00, and we were really beginning to wonder. A rumor was finally spread by the candidate-appointed observers on duty that they had refused to allow the station to open because the election officials in charge of the station had already signed their stack of blank ballots. This, the observers felt, could easily be a first step towards stuffing the ballot box. It was almost noon when more important election officials arrived from some more central location backed by heavily-armed Argentinean UN soldiers. They marched into the closed ballot station – the local officials had barricaded themselves in – and in a few minutes voting started.

Throughout the day, the atmosphere was festive. Children ran through and around the lines. Friends spoke with friends whom they might rarely see. Vendors sold snacks: cookies and crackers; peanut butter on bread or cassava; fried sweet potato, plantain, and fish; plates piled high with beans and rice; and drinks of various sorts.

It was after 2:00 when all my friends from Matenwa had finally cast their votes. Mèt Abner, the Matenwa school’s principal, was the last, because he simply refused to push or be pushed in a line. He was willing to stand in line for almost eight hours to exercise his civic duty, and that long wait was preferable to any sort of jostling. It’s a sentiment I very much admire.

On the way back up the hill, under the hot tropical sun, we talked about what might come of the election, who would win and who would lose, which races would come down to run-offs in March. It was a slow, dusty trip. There’s been very little rain since early December, and dust covers Lagonav’s roads. It’s several inches deep in places. I spent most of the way chatting with Gertrude, grandmother of my newest godson, born February 3. Gertrude supports her children by walking to the various markets around Lagonav and trading. She rarely misses a day of work, hiking to distant markets nearly every day, so the walk down to Zetwa and back up to Matenwa was nothing remarkable for her. She was dressed up in her best Sunday dress, hat, and shoes. Like Abner, it took her a long time to vote, but she would not be denied the opportunity.

It’s encouraging, but also a little embarrassing to see the commitment to voting that Haitians showed. Consistently low American voter turnout, in a place where it really is easy to vote, belies the “of the people, by the people, and for the people” rhetoric that seemed so important at the beginning of our republic. One wonders what possibilities for change would be open to us if we could learn to engage in the electoral process as Haitians do.

I’m worried about Jhony.

Before I go on, I should add that, though my proofreading skills have fallen on hard times, “Jhony” is not an error. That very American name is common in Haiti, but to Haitians the “h” appears to make little sense. They know that it’s there, but they don’t know where to put it. It precedes the “o” as often as it follows it, I think. I don’t suppose it matters.

And “Jhony” isn’t even Jhony’s name. His name is actually Makenson. Like many Haitians, the name he really uses is a nickname. Though he says that he’s called Makenson in school, I’ve never heard him addressed that way. In Ka Glo, he’s Jhony Bebette. “Bebette”, his mother’s nickname, is used to identify him when his own nickname is not enough. There are, in fact, other Jhonies and Johnies in the area.

I’ve known Jhony Bebette since I began coming to Ka Glo in 1997. He was seven or eight at the time, but already working hard for his mother in all the spare time he had. She sells bread, homemade coconut candy, and ground coffee from a basket she sets up along the road as it turns uphill towards Mabanbou, the cluster of homes just down the hill from where I live.

She roasts and grinds the coffee herself and makes the candy at home. She buys the bread down the hill in Petyonvil, so she’s got a roundtrip to make on foot each day. That trip, the time it takes to make the other things she sells, and the work around her house take up a fair amount of time, time she can’t spend sitting at her basket, making sales. So her children sit there for her. From a fairly young age, they learn to sell the stuff she offers, to keep track of money, and to make accurate change.

She’s even created a way to do business that works with little children in charge. Everything she sells goes for the same price: a Haitian dollar, which is the usual way to refer to five gourdes. Whenever prices have risen, she’s adjusted the quantities she provides at that price, but she doesn’t adjust the price. That way, making change is, very literally, child’s play.

And so I got used to seeing Jhony sitting by the basket, selling his mother’s wares. Or coming to the mapou tree to fetch water. Or, as he grew, walking down the mountain to Malik, where he would meet her as she headed home from Petyonvil, to help her carry her load. He was a cheerful but serious boy and, in his mid-teens, he’s become a serious but cheerful young man.

The year before last, he finished sixth grade at Mèt Anténor’s school, the nearby public primary school, and he passed the national primary school graduation exam. He was fortunate enough to secure a place at the public high school in Petyonvil. A good thing, too, because his mother could certainly not afford to send him to a private school. Even a cheap one. The public high school is almost free. He was nervous his first year in secondary school. Things were so different. Different teachers for different courses instead of a single teacher all day long. Much larger classes, filled with kids he didn’t know. But he worked hard, passed comfortably, and started his second year with more hope than fear.

In November, he became ill. I don’t have all the details, but it went something like this: He developed a rash and, at roughly the same time, began experiencing moments of dizzy weakness. The last time he went down to school, in November, he was so dizzy by the end of the day that he had to lie down, and he passed out. By the time he awoke, it was dark. He tried to start the hard uphill hike back home but he couldn’t. He just didn’t have the strength. Fortunately, he saw our neighbor Toto, driving by in his boss’s 4-by-4. Toto put Jhony in the back seat, finished some errands he had to do, and drove him home.

It was a week or so later that I heard about it all. I was away almost all of November, working in the provinces. I immediately asked what the doctor had said, but was sorry to learn that Jhony hadn’t been to a doctor. His mother didn’t have the money to take him, and, even if she did, it’s not certain she would have done so. She and her children belong to a charismatic group of Christians who meet in a home near where her business is, and they had determined that Jhony’s problem was not medical. They believed it to have been caused by the devils who live uphill from them.

These “devils” are the vodoun practitioners who live in Mabanbou. Conservative Protestants tend to be extremely hostile to vodoun, inclined to accuse vodoun practitioners of all sorts of wickedness. Jhony explained to me that he had been told that his soul had been taken to offer as a sacrifice.

Or something like that. I still have a hard time following such stories. I want to be very clear, though: This is nothing more than my very rough rendering of what Jhony told me his church’s leaders explained to him. So instead of taking Jhony to a doctor, they had him move into the church building. There, he could be prayed for constantly and intensively.

And this is where I got involved. At the time Jhony looked awful: thin, downcast, a little lifeless. And the rash was driving him nuts. I spoke to him, and then to his mother, respectfully about the prayer that they were using to heal him, but I also suggested that a doctor might have some good advice. I gave Bebette money to pay for the appointment and for tests and medicines if such were required, and left Ka Glo for another week.

I came back to discover Jhony still living in the church and not going to school. They had indeed been to a doctor, but when the doctor asked for lab tests, Bebette decided to return to the church with Jhony and follow prayer instead. I have no idea how they spent the money, but Bebette is raising five children, so I’m sure there’s no lack of need.

By that point, Jhony was feeling a little better. He had gotten the rash under control with some calamine lotion that I brought him. He was anxious to get back to school because he had already missed out on a lot and the second-quarter exam period was approaching, but he was afraid that he didn’t have the strength to go down to Petyonvil and then return each day on foot. So I gave him the money he would need to take a truck between Petyonvil and Malik, and I left for another few days.

When I returned this time, I was discouraged to learn that Jhony still was not going to school. His mother and their pastor didn’t think he was ready to leave the church. He was starting to look a lot better, but he seemed to be feeling increasingly discouraged. Exams were starting, and he would not be in school for them. If he were to lose a whole set of exams, he would have a hard time passing for the year, and this would have serious consequences.

Generally speaking, it’s not that unusual for a Haitian kid to fail a year of school and to have to repeat it. But slots at the public high school are so desirable that its administration does not let kids repeat grades there. Fail and you’re out. For Jhony, failing school this year could easily mean that his education is over, after a very promising start. And he is very clear about this. As his health and strength have returned to him, his frustration has grown. He thought he was ready to go down the mountain to take his end-of-term exams, but his mother was unable or unwilling to give him either the twenty gouds that roundtrip transportation would cost each day or the fifty gouds to pay the examination fee. With the Haitian goud at about 43 to the dollar, the sums are equivalent to roughly 47 cents and $ 1.16. Though her income is small, and she has a lot of things to manage with it, it doesn’t seem like a lot of money. But this is an extremely difficult claim to judge.

I would have given him the money myself. It wouldn’t be much money for me, either. But I couldn’t convince myself that it would have the effect I was looking for. I have already given his mother money for him. She didn’t use the money I gave her for medical care to pay for medical care, and she didn’t use the money I gave her to pay for his transportation to school and back to get him to school. I do not believe that I should be making decisions for her and her son, but I can’t see myself simply giving them money for I-don’t-know-what either. It’s complicated.

And it gets more complicated in surprising ways. I visit Jhony in the church every chance I get. It’s nice to talk. But if the pastor’s there, he is certain to remind me none too discretely that I said I would buy several sacks of cement towards the construction of the church. This is false. I said no such thing. The truth is that he asked me to buy cement, and I didn’t say “absolutely not”. I said that I would consider the idea. I didn’t want to say “no” outright because so much of Jhony’s immediate future seems to depend on him.

I don’t want to paint Pastor Narcisse in a bad light. He’s taken responsibility for Jhony and for a small church where a growing congregation meets under a woven palm-leave roof that sits on a shaky frame. It would mean a lot to him to get a real structure built, so he would be crazy to let my visits pass without trying to convince me to help him out. At the same time, I’m just not that interested in financing church construction. I have, as they say, other fish to fry.

Soon, enough though, I’ll have to decide whether and what I want to do about Jhony. It seems to me possible, though not certain, that his family is now hoping that I will simply take over his school expenses for them. The interest I’ve shown in him over the course of a couple of years, but especially since he became sick, could very easily have created such a hope. Not deciding anything is not an option, because it would be exactly the same as deciding to leave well enough – or unwell enough – alone.

We sat in the meeting room at the top of the school in Matenwa with ten little stones, a pen, and a pile of scrap paper. I was trying to determine whether he knew his numbers, one-four.

He could write them on paper. “2” gave him some problems, but he was even able to write a perfectly good “6” at one point. It soon became apparent, however, that the fact that he could write the various digits did not mean that he knew what they meant. He did not seem to connect a “1” with one thing or a “2” with two things or a “3” with three.

Jantoutou joined Vana’s third-grade class this year. He’d been friends for years with other kids in the class, but hadn’t been going to school. He is what Haitians call a “bèbè”, a deaf-mute, and such children generally miss out on the chance to go to school. There’s just no place for them in a traditional Haitian classroom, where the emphasis is on recitation of memorized texts. There is, for example, a deaf-mute who lives in Nankonble, just a little way down along the hill from where I live in Ka Glo. He’s a full-grown young man, big and muscular, and he makes a living working for the masons and carpenters who build houses in the area. He does the heavy work: mixing and carrying mortar, lugging rocks or cinder block or planks, digging holes. But he didn’t get to go to school. His ability to communicate is limited.

But the Matenwa Community Learning Center is different from almost all other Haitian schools. Teachers there focus on creating classrooms where children can work together to discover the world. The children work individually, in small groups, and in large groups to teach one another and themselves to read, to write, to appreciate and improve the environment that surrounds them, and to learn math and the other skills and information they’ll need as they grow.

And the freer, more participative approach the school takes leaves plenty of room for students who would not traditionally find their ways into Haitian primary schools. I’ve written before of the adult women who attend classes with the Matenwa kids. These women are only the most obvious example of students who would not be in primary school were they elsewhere in Haiti.

Jantoutou is an example of a very different kind. Vana is happy with his presence in her class. He is growing socially, integrating himself increasingly into the class’s activities. As long as he has something to do, he is hard to distinguish from the other kids. Only when he feels lost does he tend to misbehave. Naturally enough, I suppose. When the kids are writing or drawing, he works closely with another student, copying whatever she does. And so he is getting better at drawing, and he can write some words.

But Vana has been increasingly concerned at the difficulty of determining exactly how much Jantoutou is learning beyond how to behave in a group. It’s hard to be certain what the drawings he creates or the words he copies mean to him. The example Vana cited when I spoke to her was straightforward: He seemed to understand addition problems some of the time, but not always. She knew that he probably needed more individual attention, but with twenty-something other students to worry about, and without experience or training to help her know how to work with a deaf child, she was a little bit stumped.

I certainly don’t know any more about working with deaf children than Vana does. If anything, I know less. She is, at least, an experienced and successful teacher of kids. But I’d become fascinated during my monthly visits to the school as I got to see Jantoutou working in her class, and I was curious to see what doing some math with him would be like. So I asked her whether I could work with him for a few minutes, and she quickly agreed.

I started by making three piles of stones: one with a single stone, one with two, and one with three, and I wrote the appropriate digits under each. I used pointing in an effort to associate the digits with the piles. We then spent about twenty minutes alternating between two games. In one, I would put out one, two, or three stones, and he would have to write the correct digit. In the other, I would point to a “1”, a “2”, or a “3” on a sheet of paper in front of him, and he would have to choose the right number of rocks.

It soon became clear that he had not really been associating the digits with the quantities. He seemed to be choosing digits more-or-less at random. That is, in fact, why I know he can write a perfectly good “6.” He wrote at least two of them that I can remember, though he never had six rocks in front of him at once.

Slowly, his answers became more and more regular, more and more correct. It will take a lot more practice for me to be able to be certain that he’s getting it. I just don’t know what I’m doing. If nothing else he seemed to be having a great time.

I hope to make sitting with him a part of my daily schedule when I’m in Matenwa. Abner Sauveur, the school’s principal, spoke to me about the activity later that day, and he plans to start spending time with him as well.

My work here in Haiti is an apprenticeship. I think of myself as learning all the time. Working with Jantoutou will be a new challenge. I don’t know what he’ll get out of it, but I am very sure I’ll learn a lot.