In the recent movie, “News of the World,” Tom Hanks plays a former Civil War soldier who travels from town to town reading newspapers to the locals. They pay ten cents apiece and gather together, anxiously awaiting his words. He is their connection to the outside universe, their conduit to something new that could delight them, fascinate them, maybe even change their lives.
Although I don’t read newspapers to our kids, I sometimes feel like that Hanks character, arriving with an announcement that, for the moment, only I know, an announcement that will surely elicit a response. I stand in front of our assembled horde gathered in the gazebo, the smallest kids sitting on the older kids’ laps.
“All right, timoun (children), I have something to tell you!”
Sometimes, it’s nothing more than “Tonight we are going to watch a movie!” which still elicits a huge cheer. Sometimes I share that a beloved former visitor is returning the next day (more big cheers) or — and this is a huge one — that we are going on a field trip the next day to the beach (leaping, screaming, hugging, mass hysteria!)
Still, the best announcements are when I get to share some good news about one of the kids. These are some of my most cherished memories in 12 years of bringing the news to our little orphanage.
Previous good news: Manno rocks a Madonna University t-shirt while celebrating his graduation from high school. He’s currently a pre-med student at the Livonia, Michigan-based university.
One of those moments came last week. It was really special, and I asked someone to film it so I could share it with you here.
I’ve written how our four oldest kids, two young men (JJ, Chivensky) and two young women (Samanza, Esterline) have been grinding to get their English language testing completed for their college application process.
It has been a nightmare. COVID-19 and kidnappings wreaked havoc on the TOEFL testing schedule. Our weak internet foiled multiple attempts to take the Duolingo English test online. It felt like tossing clay pigeons into the air. Every time the kids tried to post a test score, they got shot out of the sky.
Finally, after Yonel, our Haitian director, went to the internet company and begged for better modem boxes, we were able to get a strong enough signal for the kids to take one test a piece. And all four passed with high scores. We quickly hurried the results into the college application process. And we waited.
This ultimately led to the moment I want to share with you.
Because my email is listed as the contact email (since our kids lack regular access to computers or email accounts of their own), I was notified last week that ALL FOUR OF THE APPLICANTS HAD BEEN ADMITTED to Hope College in Holland, Michigan, an excellent, liberal arts college on a beautiful campus that goes back more than 150 years.
All four?
I read that email and nearly fell to my knees.
But then came the best part. Sharing the news of the world. Having just returned from the orphanage, I didn’t want to wait until my next trip.
So I called Yonel and arranged to dial in during our nightly devotions. And with Yonel holding up his cell phone, I yelled as loud as I could for JJ, Chivensky, Samanza and Esterline to stand up and get close to the speaker.
I then read aloud the email that announced that all four of them had been admitted, and — on top of that — each had been granted a partial scholarship!
Because the internet is so weak, I couldn’t see any images. And because Yonel’s phone was being held up, I couldn’t hear any one voice reacting. But when I said the word “Congratulations!’ I heard a whoop of high pitched squeals, and I shivered, as I almost always do, and my eyes began to tear up.
There is nothing like delivering good news to children who have so little of it. And there is nothing like delivering hope — or in this case Hope College — to kids who so desperately cling to it.
Esterline, Samanza, JJ, and Chivensky
When I saw the video, I smiled. It brought me back to other moments over the years when a piece of news prompted spontaneous cheers: the news that Emmanuel had been admitted to Madonna University, our first college acceptance. The news that Edney had scored a 96 on his TOEFL exam, the best performance of any kid to that point. The news that 7-year-old Gaelson, who had been airlifted to America with lung disease and a hole in his esophagus, was out of the hospital and coming back to the orphanage.
Big screams. Big whoops. Spontaneous joy. Group happiness.
It is such a privilege to be the bearer of good news, and to get to watch it register on young faces. In a place where stories of hurricanes, earthquakes, disease and death are often the words that arrive on your doorstep, now and then, the orphanage lets me be the mailman of hope.
Do you remember taking your SATs? Chances are you went with some fellow classmates. Maybe the school helped arrange the paperwork. A parent likely drove you to wherever the test was given. You showed your ID. You took the test. Your parent was waiting when you got out.
Something like that?
That process is considerably different for the kids at the have Have Faith Haiti Orphanage hoping to go to college. The test they need to overcome is called the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). It’s a difficult test if you didn’t grow up speaking English. Heck. It’s a difficult test if you DID grow up speaking English. I know. I’ve tried it. And I write for a living.
But these days in Haiti, the test itself is just part of the problem. We have seven kids currently ready to go to college next year, four young women, three young men. All of them have been taking a TOEFL class for the last two school years. To say it has been a challenge is like saying Haiti’s weather is sometimes warm.
The first huge hurdle came last year, when the man who was teaching the TOEFL class, an affable, always-smiling instructor named Vladamir “Phedre” Delinois, came down sick with a fever. He was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with COVID-19.
He never came out.
His sudden death, at age 56, shook our orphanage from top to bottom. And the most affected were the kids in his TOEFL class, who had come to love his booming voice and his warm, teasingly loving approach. Working them through their grief was an enormous challenge.
Then we had to try and find another teacher capable of picking up the class.
Mr. Phedre’s last TOEFL class. Edney, far right, is now a freshman in college.
This is Haiti
We were able to hire a pair of fine Haitian instructors, one named Rose, an older, elegant woman with an amazing educational resume, and a younger woman she suggested named Marie Claude. Together they tried to pick up the pieces from Mr. Phedre’s death and continue steering the kids forward.
Then came the challenge of physically taking the test. The TOEFL is only offered sporadically in Haiti, in a few select cities, and at a single location in Port-au-Prince. We tried to schedule it several times, only to learn the test was cancelled due to COVID concerns, or manifestations in the streets, or the threat of kidnapping from gangs.
I don’t remember having to deal with that with my SATs.
When we finally booked a date that wasn’t changed, we then had the challenge of identification. It’s not like our kids have driver‘s licenses or social security cards. We needed to get them passports. But the only way to get passports is to bring a parent to the offices to vouch for the child, or death certificate paperwork proving there is no parent.
Well. You can imagine the challenges here. In some cases, our kids have no parents. In most cases, there are no death certificates. One of our brightest and most promising students, a teenaged girl, has a mother living somewhere in the provinces, but we went months without being able to reach her. This is common. People move. Phone numbers change or are disconnected.
Finally, after exhaustive searching, someone was able to reach the mother. Which is when we found out she had no identification paperwork herself. Nothing to prove who she was. Without that, she could not come to the city and vouch for the passport. So we first had to arrange to get her registered with the government to establish her existence. All that before we could try and get a passport for her daughter.
We are still waiting.
Meanwhile, the daughter remains unable to take the TOEFL test. Any chance of her going to college come September has basically disappeared. This is Haiti.
Happier testing times: 2018 and 2019 test takers celebrate their achievement
That old college try
On December 18th, one week before Christmas, we were able to take six of our kids to the TOEFL exam. Thanks to friends who have high end security, we were able to get them a safe ride back and forth. The kids were so brave. They’d never been to a testing center before. They were split up into different sections and could not sit near each other. The test itself was delayed by an hour, with no explanation given. And during the test, there was no one available in case of a problem.
One of our kids, Esterline, 17, could not submit the test when it was finished. She kept pressing the “submit” button on the computer, but nothing happened. The only other button was “cancel.” Without aid or guidance, she finally pressed that one.
Her entire test was cancelled. She never received a score.
The others fared better. Some did amazingly well. The colleges they were shooting for required a score of 79 or better. Two of our younger kids, Junie-Anna and Widley, both scored high the 90s. Unfortunately, both of them are going to have to wait a year to go to university, because we simply didn’t have the budget to send so many at one time.
Meanwhile, the four oldest students scored in the 70s. Good. But they could do better. They all expressed confidence they would improve greatly with a second chance, now that they’d seen how the testing center worked.
Unfortunately, we recently learned that all TOEFL tests in Port-au-Prince are canceled until April.
And our new TOEFL teacher suffered a kidnapping attempt and was shot in the hand. It was shocking. She is recovering, thank the Lord, but understandably, her participation and our classes had to come to a halt.
Dèyè mòn, gen mòn: Beyond mountains, there are mountains.
— Haitian proverb
What do you do? You improvise. You search. We discovered an alternative online test called the Duolingo English test that many colleges accept. Our kids began studying that one just before New Year’s. They worked hours every day, taking practice exams.
Finally, they were ready for the real thing. We set them up in separate rooms. We moved the small internet boxes close to them. They took the test. They pressed “upload.”
It started uploading at 2 percent an hour.
And 2 percent an hour.
It took two days. And finally, when the number reached “99 percent”, it flashed and started back over at zero.
None of the scores counted.
Djouna works on her college essay.
I don’t remember my college entrance tests being this challenging. That’s because they weren’t. Mountains beyond mountains. The old Haitian proverb. I know our kids will find a way. We always do. But the word “test” has a whole different meaning in this hot and endlessly challenged country. And our kids, when they finally get their passing scores, will surely have earned them.
The holiday break means a lot of things at the orphanage. In the last few years, it’s also meant a concert. A big one. I’ve written about how our kids have formed various music bands to work on songs they love and practice the instruments they’re learning. And how they can’t wait to get “on stage” — meaning the front porch of our three-room schoolhouse — and perform for the rest of the orphanage.
We did our first of these concerts a couple years ago. A simple, three song endeavor.
Now we do Woodstock.
OK. Maybe that’s pushing it. But I did write a novel a few years ago called “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto” and in researching Woodstock for that book, I learned that backstage at that famous music festival was a one massively confused, train-station cluster of musicians, equipment, cords, wires, roadies, fans, friends, and major hallucinogens.
Our concert has all that, minus the drugs.
We had our headliners, the Hermanos Brothers, our oldest band, all teenaged boys, who were set to close the show with a four-song set.
The Hermanos Brothers // Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo
We had our delightful teenaged girls’ band, Destiny 7, who were working on two Christmas numbers.
Destiny 7 // Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo
We had our precocious younger ensemble “Tet Chajey” (Creole for “troublemakers”) who were up for anything.
“Tet Chajey” // Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo
And we had a new group, The Future Stars, made up of young promising talents, who were preparing the classic — and how can you do a holiday concert without this one? — “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”
Tickets were free.
A messy backline
Preparing for this big show, which takes place on a Saturday morning, is a mini comedy in itself. The day of the performance, an all-hands-on-deck call goes out, and everyone from 20-year-old Kiki to 4-year-old Jerry descends on the music room to move every microphone, keyboard, guitar, amplifier, drum, cymbal, tambourine and wood block outside. Of course, they do this one piece at a time, bumping into each other and tangling each other in cords and wires.
Eventually we set up our “stage,” which, given the need for power on an otherwise empty concrete slab, involves running one extension cord after another through the school windows and into classroom plugs. By the time we are finished, the school looks like it is regurgitating orange cords onto the patio.
Oh. Wait. Forgot the chairs. We need to bring them from the kitchen, the living room, the balcony, and anywhere else we can find them. They get set up in the gravel and dirt that fronts the school. Ta-da! We have our venue. It’s not quite Max Yasgur’s farm in 1969.
But hey, we ARE outside.
Now comes the introductions. I handle those, mostly because they are more instructions than introductions (“OK, Future Stars, you come up now. Yes. Uh-uh….Come on…Yes….Now…No, not you little guys! The other…Wait!…”)
The concert begins. The first performance is charming. The Future Stars sing the Hippopotamus song. But more impressively, they feature Babu on the keyboards, Danois on the bass, Louvens on the guitar, Nickenson on the drums, John Carey on the accordion (the accordion?) and Mark on the violin. All of them are under 15 years old.
I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
I don’t want a doll, no dinky Tinkertoy
I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy…
Big applause. Relieved smiles. A quick bow.
Next act.
But still joy to the world
The teenaged girls in Destiny 7, clad in their pink band t-shirts, start with a cover of the Darlene Love classic “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).” During rehearsals we spent time doing a little choreography on this song, where they extend their arms Supremes-style with each line. It looked great in practice, but when they start on stage, it lasts just one move. Teenaged embarrassment takes over. And no amount of me waving my arms from the back is going to change that.
They finish with a cover of John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas,” which they wanted to perform alongside some of our youngest girls, aged 5-9, who joined in only on the chorus. Still, hearing those sweet high-pitched voices singing the lyrics “War is over” sent a warm surge through my bones. It’s a beautiful song anyhow, but when children sing it, it becomes a wish.
I thought about what some of those singers had already endured in their young lives; abandonment, hunger, dirt-level poverty. There is technically no war in Haiti. Yet every day is a battle. War is over. If only.
But back to the show. My favorite highlight came during the teenaged boys set, their final number, a rendition of the old Three Dog Night classic, “Joy to the World.” It featured the first ever lead vocal performance by Widley Montrevil.
Despite a name that sound like it comes with a French castle, Widley has had to endure more than most of our kids. He arrived as a five-year-old with a severe skin condition that lefts bumps and white marks all over his legs and arms. Every night he needed special medication spread over his body. Then he had to wear long sleeves and pants to keep himself covered. This went on for years. Poor Widley, on 100 degree days, always wrapped up from the neck down.
He needed glasses young, and the combination of his skin issues and his spectacles could easily have weighted him with a “nerd” tag had he been a typical American middle-schooler.
But our kids are kinder than that, and Widley can hold his own. He’s strong willed and extremely intelligent. At 16, he’s already aced the TOEFL test he’ll need to go to college in two years. He reads incessantly. And true to form, musically, he chose to play… the violin.
And there he was, Saturday morning, singing the lead on “Joy to the World”…
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog!
Was a good friend of mine…
And then, moments later, he launched into our first-ever violin solo during a rock song. Yep. You read that right. He pulled it off flawlessly, and I couldn’t help but scream a guttural “Yeah!” when he did. In Woodstock terms it was like Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem.
The “Tet Chajey” group joined the chorus of this finale as they sang
Joy to the world
All the boys and girls
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me!”
With their final note, the concert was complete. Polite applause met their exit, and the holiday festival was history.
So maybe it’s not Janis, Sly, Jefferson Airplane or Country Joe. But it was beautiful noise and our own mass confusion, and it was a blast. I only hope we put everything back in its box. We have to do this all again before you know it.
Top image: The crowd at the Woodstock music festival, August 1969. (Photo by Ralph Ackerman/Getty Images)
PORT-AU-PRINCE — We start when the sun goes down and the pavement beneath our feet loses its heat.
“Anu machay!” I announce. Let’s walk!
I didn’t used to declare this. It started quietly, as a way to get exercise during the pandemic lockdown. A simple walk around our third-of-an-acre lot. To be honest, it was little more than walking in a large circle.
But no act, big or small, goes unnoticed by our kids. And after two or three laps (each of which take no more than a minute and a half) one of the younger boys skipped alongside me.
“Mister Mitch, what are you doing?”
“I’m walking.”
“Can I walk with you?”
“Sure.”
He took my hand. He fell into step.
Shortly thereafter, another boy joined. Then two girls. I had not viewed this as an official “activity,” but in a place where throwing small pebbles in the air can be a full-out competition, I guess I should have figured on it.
“Mister Mitch, can I walk with you?”
“Mister Mitch, I want to walk!”
“No, me!”
“Me!”
On we go.
Round and round
The walk itself is not much on scenery. We pass the gazebo where some kids are reading. We duck under the laundry line. We slide by the guard shack, beneath the basketball rim, to the right of the trash dumpster, past the three-room schoolhouse, beside the purple-painted music room, down the alley beneath the patio, past a wheelbarrow, the old generator, the steps, the water cooler and back to the gazebo again.
What makes the walk special is the ever changing cast of kids who grab my hands, pull on my shirt, hug my legs. And the conversation. The curious, often meandering, stream-of-consciousness chatter that kids offer when they’re happy and engaged.
“Mister Mitch, Manez hit me.”
“Mister Mitch, look at my shoe.”
“Mister Mitch, can we have popcorn tonight?”
“Mister Mitch, I found a nail!”
Lately, with Christmas having just passed, there’s been a lot of spontaneous singing.
“Come they call me a rump-a-bum-bum!…”
“We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas…”
“The first Noel, the angels did sing…”
The other day, little Moise, Chika’s younger brother, held my hand and pointed to the sky and said, “That where Chika is.” Chika, of course, died five years ago. Moise talks to her — actually yells hello at the clouds — on a regular basis.
“Chika! Hi, Chika!”
On we go.
Look
Although it is often the small kids who clamor to walk, at times, the teenagers saunter alongside.
“You are doing your exercise, sir?” JU, a 16-year-old, will ask.
“Yes.”
“Can I exercise with you, sir?”
“Sure.”
“Sir, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Um…when you were my age, what was your biggest failure?”
It goes on like this. I’ve talked about nutrition, the law, Beatles music, World War I, high school, haircuts and American slang on these daily walks. I’ve navigated accusations over who hit who, who grabbed who, who stepped on the other’s shoe. I’ve given advice, solace, told stories about my youth and led a chorus of “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.”
The other evening, as we were walking, the little kids suddenly yanked at my shirt, stopping me in mid-pace.
“Gaday!” they squealed. Look!
They were pointing to the sky, and the sudden crescent moon.
“Lalin! Lalin!”
They marveled at it for a good minute, asking me why it was so small, why it was so bright. They seemed perfectly content to stand there, on a concrete slab, talking in the early evening sky. I tried to remember the last time I stopped and looked at something in such wonder. And then I realized it was pretty much every evening about this time, and the gathering of innocent kids just happy to walk beside me. Haiti can be stunning in its simple pleasures. On we go.
Each issue from “Life at the Orphanage” chronicles the joy and lessons learned among 50+ children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Comment below, and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The old song asks the question, “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” I know. I know this year and next year and for many years to come, just as I have known for the last decade.
New Year’s Eve, for me, is spent at our orphanage, with 50 or more of the happiest kids to ever ring in a change in the calendar.
It wasn’t always this way. The truth is, we kind of invented the tradition. Back in December of 2011, I asked what the kids had usually done for New Year’s. The answer was “nothing much.” When there’s no money, nowhere to go, and the average age is around 12 years old, really, what did we expect? Good luck trying to keep kids up until midnight, especially when it’s hot and humid and buggy and the electricity keeps going out.
But recognizing that the New Year is rung in at different times around the globe, I figured why not jiggle the clock until it made sense for us?
Thus we created the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage New Traditional New Year’s Dinner Meal, which, unlike the 10 pm, five-course affair you pay big money for in fancy restaurants, consisted of the three staples of orphanage celebration: pizza, cake, and juice.
Now, it wasn’t easy convincing a nearby pizza place to make 20 pies on New Year’s Eve. We had to pay in full that morning and pick up the pies in the late afternoon. No matter. Our kids get hungry early. The “midnight meal” begins at 6 p.m.
Over the years, we went from eating on the balcony to setting up picnic tables in the yard. There, by the light of solar-charged bulbs, we were able to distribute the pizza, pour the juice, and later cut the sheet cakes into 80 pieces (kids and staff included.)
But that was just the start.
“Fireworks,” I said one year.
“Fireworks?” Yonel, our director, said back.
“Yes. We have to create some.”
He rolled his eyes.
“This isn’t something we have, Mr. Mitch.”
Well, I said to myself. Not yet.
Nancy Giles, journalist and CBS Sunday Morning correspondent celebrating NYE at Have Faith Haiti
Field of dreams
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Haiti is a funny place when it comes to resources. It can be hard to find clean water, difficult to buy mouthwash, damn near impossible to find certain fresh produce. But when I pulled Siem aside and said, “Listen, if I give you some money, do you think you can find someone who sells sparklers?” his response was simply, “Do you have $10?”
I gave him the money. A half hour later, he was back with a brown paper bag and 50 sparklers.
Go figure.
We decided to make these sparklers our version of fireworks, symbolic of the passing of one year and the start of another. Wanting to make sure the kids didn’t burn themselves, we cleared out an area of the flower bed, filled it with some extra dirt, and declared it the official “field of dreams” meaning each sparkler carried a child’s wish for the new year.
The kids sensed that something was up when we came in with dirt.
“What are you doing, Mr. Mitch?”
“Preparing for tonight.”
“What is tonight, Mr. Mitch?”
“You know. New Year’s. Where we sing…you know…”
I pictured the moment when the last sparkler went out, and realized that in most places — Times Square, New Year’s Eve concerts, city ballrooms — the stroke of midnight ignited a explosion of “Auld Lang Syne.”
So I gathered the kids in the gazebo that afternoon and taught it to them.
A cup o’ kindness
Now, I’d like to say I knew the words, but I didn’t. I still don’t. After “should auld acquaintance be forgot,” I basically, well, forget.
Then again, I figured, our kids didn’t know what “auld” meant. I’m not sure what “auld” means. What mattered was the melody.
So that’s what we learned. The song, at least on our New Year’s Eve, goes like this: “Da-da, da-da-da, da, da-da, da-da, da-da-da-daaaaaaa!…”
And that’s what we sing after each kid plants his or her sparkler, and watches it fizzle until the final sparkler goes out. Then a huge cry of “Happy New Year!” spreads across our little third-of-an-acre, and the kids leap up and down. They scream, they hug, they dance, they leap, they all but fly through the air.
The first time I saw this, I nearly cried. Here were children who a year earlier had not even celebrated this milestone, now so ready to be joyous, accepting new traditions as if they’d been doing them for years.
And now we have been doing them for years. The pizza, the cake, the sparklers, the singing. We have added a new wrinkle, the writing of New Year’s resolutions, two per child, which I then gather and put in an envelope not to be opened for 365 days.
Then, on the 1st of January, each kid read’s aloud the old resolutions, and the others vote on whether he or she made it come true.
If yes, they get a t-shirt.
If no, well, they usually get a t-shirt.
Hey. It’s New Year’s.
Josue and his resolutions for 2020
I know there are fancier ways to do it. I know champagne and tiramisu sound better than pizza and sheet cake. But I honestly wouldn’t trade our simple little New Year’s (the kids are in bed by 9:30!) for the catbird seat next to Anderson Cooper high above Times Square.
Given all the madness, danger, poverty and corruption of this island nation, the fact that its children can so purely and emotionally ring in a new year – with undying hope that this one will be better than the last – is something not only to celebrate but to cherish. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
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Have Faith Haiti Mission
c/o A Hole in the Roof Foundation
29836 Telegraph Road
Southfield, MI 48034
Have Faith Haiti is operated by the A Hole in the Roof Foundation, a 501(c)(3) org (TAX ID# 27-0609504). Donations are tax deductible.
About the Mission
The Have Faith Haiti Mission is a special place of love and caring, dedicated to the safety, education, health and spiritual development of Haiti’s impoverished children and orphans. You can learn more here.
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