Out of all the incredible experiences I've had here in Haiti, I think my favorite was last week. Liz, Alin, John (another translator), several of the CHW women, and I went to a school in Raypool and gave a lesson on safe water and hygiene. We got the idea to do this in part because of how interested kids in the Gadyen Dlo communities were to see the posters we had laminated for Santho, Rolax, and Watson. Liz also has some experience doing these types of educational visits to schools in Honduras, and for me designing and implementing these types of water-based programs for kids in schools is probably what I want to do most in my life. So, about two and half weeks ago we walked around Raypool looking for this school, "Catherine Fleur" because we had heard that most kids in Do Digue attend it. We ended up meeting with the director who was very excited for us to come back and give the students a lesson. He mentioned to us that the worst problem the students at the school face is malnutrition, and that every week they end up having to send students home who are passing out during the school day. Probably dehydration and having had nothing to eat.
The school does have a Gadyen Dlo bucket and uses it (and the chlorine) everyday, but we still brought them another one (in addition to two free bottle of chlorine) because it just seemed crazy to only have one bucket for that many kids. We also brought another Gadyen Dlo bucket for them that we fashioned with two soaps attached by rope and wrote "Lave Men Ou Ak Savon" (wash your hands with soap) on the bucket. This was also conveniently one of the main lines in a song we made up and taught all the students. We used the tune of the "head, shoulder, knees, & toes" song, and made up a song about hand washing. Since Alin has lots of experience teaching in schools he was excellent in his role as translator/teacher, and one of my favorite things was that he told each group of students that the additional "ak savon" after each line was for the boys, "the baritones" as he called them, to really let loose and belt out as loud as they could. They took this job very seriously - it was adorable. I should note that this week (one week after our lesson), as I was walking around doing surveys in Raypool, kids would run up to me and start singing that song whenever they saw me. Talk about heartwarming.
The students lining up for attendance first thing in the morning.
The school has kids from age 3 - 16 but eventually they were divided into three different age groups, so we taught our lesson a little differently for each group. But the main messages were the same, wash your hands after using the bathroom and before eating, and always drink treated water. We also taught the songs (we made another song to the tune of "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands" that was about always drinking treated water) to both groups, we played a germ game with glitter, and explained the concepts of germs and water contamination with posters for each of the three groups.
One of our posters, with the youngest group of kids
A game we played to help demonstrate how quickly germs can spread. We asked for 5 volunteers (per age group) and sprinkled glitter into their palms. Then we asked them to rub their hands together and go back into their group and shake hands with as many people as they could. We then told them the glitter represented germs, and they could now see how quickly germs can spread through their school.
One of the CHWs, Tamara, explaining our water poster. (This poster took me about 3 hours to draw and color ... it's definitely the most artwork I've done since taking a studio art class in undergrad.)
The glitter game with the oldest kids. For each of these volunteers we made up specific scenarios and color coded the glitter. For example, the gold glitter was for someone who didn't wash their hands after they used the bathroom, etc.
After we had done our lesson for each of the three age groups we came together as a whole school for a picture and one final rendition of the two songs. I'm trying to post a video of the singing, but our internet here is so spotty I'm not sure if I'll get it to work until I'm back in the US.
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