I was going to start with "Duck, Duck, Goose" (perhaps the greatest of all games), but I wasn't counting on the mud. I was told we were going to be teaching in a community center, but this particular "community center" was a tarpaulin tent, about 20'-by-20' with a couple of wood benches set on muddy, sloping dirt next to a creek bed that was used for a dumping ground, latrine, and pig feeding area. Now, when I hear "community center" I usually think of drinking fountains and utility rooms, vending machines, and plenty of parking. I needed to shift my imagination to suit the fact that we would be teaching the arts to teenage girls in what was essentially a campsite.
We had gone to Haiti, six artists in total, to work with adolescent girls in the tent camp at Bolous. This is one of the areas inhabited by the tens of thousands of Haitians who were displaced after the earthquake. This particular tent city is pitched on what used to be the only golf course in Haiti, a little nine-hole course at a country club. There's a cholera treatment center in what was the parking lot and a health clinic next to the tennis courts. A school for the kids of the camp is on what I imagine was the seventh-hole putting green. (Not really, but you get the point.)
Our little project was called Girls United and was sponsored by several organizations such as Meridian Health Foundation, Full-Circle Learning, The United Nations Foundation's Girl Up, and J/P Haitian Relief Organization. We were going to spend 10 days teaching teen girls that were pre-selected by the community at the tent city. Our goal was to use the arts to inspire, build confidence, and help heal the trauma that these girls had gone through with the earthquake. In the afternoons, we would caravan in a "Tap Tap" up to Petionville and teach the same program to girls at Haiti's only YWCA. ("Tap Taps" are the colorfully converted Toyota pickups that operate as taxis and buses throughout Haiti. You "tap tap" on the roof or the side when you want to get out -- hence the name.)
The camp itself was run by the J/P Haitian Relief Organization. This is an exceptional group of people working for an NGO founded by Sean Penn who have taken over the care and wellbeing of 50,000 people for the past year and a half. They have a medical clinic, a school, cholera treatment center, rubble removal, and are actively working to relocate people back into their neighborhoods. We stayed in tents in the yard of their hub -- a kind of nonprofit hippie house with equal populations of mosquitos and volunteers. (If you're looking for a place to volunteer in Haiti, look no further!)
I arrived a few days after the others, and on my first day, we drove as far as we could, and then began to hike into the camp. I was astounded at what I saw. Tent after tent. Tarp after tarp. Endless muddy aisles and paths. Chickens and pigs and goats. Naked children. Unemployed men. People cooking, smoking, laughing, and selling mangos from baskets on their heads. Tent after tent. Filled with families. And did I mention the mud? And the tents?
My wife and I had visited Haiti previously. We traveled around the country a couple of months prior to the quake to do some fact-finding about schools we were raising money for that were funded by The Mona Foundation. And this is the thing about Haiti that always gets me: the people. Haitians can be hard to read when you first get there. Generally speaking, they keep their emotions in check. But as soon as you greet them with a smile or a "BonJou," they open up with loving, radiant hearts and big, big smiles. As a culture, they are the warmest I've ever known. Their arts are breathtaking, and they have a passion for education like I've never seen.
Back to the "community center": I gathered the girls around in a circle as best we could, and we began by clapping around the circle. "Pass the Clap," the game is called. Everyone, especially me, was a bit self-conscious. My goal was simply to get them playing together. When you start to play together, you start to trust each other, and then the participants can really start to open up in surprising ways. The clap started to get faster and faster, it changed directions a few times, and then everything fell apart, as it always does, in gales of laughter.
Before I was a mid-level, B-list TV celebrity, I was a theatre actor and teacher. I taught scene study and used improv and theatre games as a way into the play. After all, "plays" happen because you're "playing," right? (That's what I used to tell my students, at least.) You're just deeply pretending, just like kids do when they pretend to be Mario and Luigi or Space Alien vs. Vampire.
So we played for a week, me and our rag-tag team, and these beautiful, courageous girls who lived in tents. We sang and danced and shared and made fools of ourselves.
We had a brilliant group of teachers with us. Besides my wife, writer Holiday Reinhorn, we had Kathryn Adams, an art therapist and trauma counselor; Nadia Todres, a photographer; John Paul Thornton, a visual arts teacher; and Valerie Velasquez.
I don't have the time or space to document everything I saw, experienced, and learned from my time with the girls, but I will say that as soon as the games moved to sound and movement and singing, the students excelled. Our goal was transformation, and I would say that we reached it. The girls wrote poetry and essays, did photo collages of their lives, and created beautiful arts and crafts from yarn and sticks and fabric and paint. The final exhibit was a wonder. We transformed that "community center." We sang and danced and read poetry and ate cake with the beautiful smiles of our new friends all around us.
I felt a bit weird knowing that what everyone there really needed were homes and jobs and education, not theatre games and photography and poetry. But I think what the arts do is intangible but crucial. It gives life, breath, healing, confidence, and a sense of community. And it's a hell of a lot of fun. I was moved by what the act of creating art was able to bring to our giant tent filled with misfits: a radiant vitality.
I hope to cross paths with our students again, and I'm sure I will. They were all brilliant in their particular way, and for Haiti to transform itself will require these mighty women.
The program continued on after we left, with Kathryn Adams, our fearless leader, and some folks from J/P, taking over and continuing the teaching work.
Now, I'm no humanitarian. I'm just an actor who did a workshop. But I keep thinking about that word "humanitarian." It means "caring for the human welfare." I would hope that our species is that, regardless of profession, we can all become humanitarians. That's the way to transform the "community center" of our ailing planet.
Some of them could be anchored offshore and provide housing and saftey for children from crime and abuse.
Then after that use the ships to fish even if they will not run fisherman can drop lines from the sagtey of the ship or nets.
I just returned from the village we have been working in, Chauffard. We have been working in this awesome village for over four years now. The more the relationships grow the more exponential the community develops.
You have seen first hand that our Haitian friends need a lot. It is sad that most of the things they need will only come in time (homes, jobs, infrastructure in general.)
But, you, and I, and anyone with an average skill in the U.S. can certainly make a significant impact. All of our friends there love to learn about everything from acting (storytelling is HUGE part of their culture) to writing to sculpting. All being the arts! In fact, we are next launching a micro-enterprise partnership that focuses on their artistic interests. Called Kreye (creole for 'create'), we will find what they already create and market it to our friends here in the states.
Keep up the great work.
Would you recommend other organizations like ours to connect with Penn's group? Do you have your own organization?
Thank you, Rainn, for renewing my hope.
Continued below.
Sending money to Haiti won't help. Unfortunately the infrasturcture of that country makes that impossible.
I admit, that since I can live on Social Security in Haiti, I have thought about starting a school.
But I am not sure have the stamina to live in Haiti
The way to help Haiti, to "really make a difference" is to buy and import tractor trailer loads of art and furniture from Haiti. They do wonderful hand painted furnture.
Like the artisians of old Europe, they can look at something, change it, and make it a work of art.
Think medieval artisians.
Its a question of marketing.
I thought about renting space in Armand's Circle in Sarsota, Florida
The rent of $7,000 a month put me off, to say the least.
I thought about mall space over Christmas in a good mall in Clearwater, Florida. The rent was $4,000 a month.
That ended that.
My main shop in Tarpon Springs paid for itself, but once I lost my "day job" that was the end of that.
I was thinking a heavily adveristed one week "Art Epositon" in a high class place in New York or San Francisco, or of course Miami would do the trick. But I never got that far.
I was thinking that someone might prevail on the President to put some Haitian Art in the White House.
Know any one in the White House art department?
The nation of Haiti is filled to the brim with beautiful art of all media. Go directly from the airport in Port Prince to the Centre d'Arte. You will begin your experience of being overwhelmed by hight quality Haitian art.
It runs from magnificent painting with religeous contex, to outstanding mahogany sculpture, to secular and religious wood carvings to kistche
Get a room at the Plaza Hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn, but it lost its franchise).
If you want to walk away from the hotel, hire a guide first, he will keep everyone else away.
Minimum wage in Haiti is $3.00 a DAY. I paid about $7.00 a an hour. Foolish, don't know.
The first day in Haiti is a bit much. The bar at the Plaza is an oasis.
Interestingly enough, moldeled after a vodoue temple.
Ask around for M. Pierre Pierre. I don't know if he is still around. .
Always carry plenty of towels, real ones, and frozen bottle of water when you go any place in Haiti.
Some of his art is very high quality, some is kitche.
After you recover from that expedtion, Take a taxi, with your guide, to the famous Iron Market. It has everything. Again you must have a guide to maintain your sanity. Its been rebuilt since the earthquake.
If you are obviously a tourist plan to have your personal space violated.
Plenty of water and towels requied.
This is Part II of III. Continued.
Like so many who have tried and failed to develop something related to Haiti, I failed.
Reaons: My fault, and under capitalization. Also, at the cost of sounding self serving, read:
"Best Ningtmare on the Earth" Herbert Cole (2001) Available on Amazon.
It's easy reading, and insightful, and believe it or not kind of funny.
The height of my success was loaning some art work the the Tampa Museum of Fine Art, and getting a VIP pin to wear at the opening of their exhibit.
My business failed, and I lost three large U Store rooms when lost when I lost me day job, and couldn't pay storage fees.
Let me assure you, that there is absolutely, ABSOLUTELY, no need for artists to train Haitians.
To send American artists to Haiti to teach art is a Heinous insult to Haitian art, the Haitian people and a waste of American funds.
Want absolute proof. Look at "The Sacred Art of Haitian Vodou" The UCLA press. Available in both hardback and paperback at Amazon.
It is so beautiful, you ought to buy the hardback. I read it three times.
Seriously, do you even listen to yourself?