Nearly three months to the day when an early morning text message alerted me to a presidential assassination, a ping close to midnight on Saturday, Oct. 16th brought more shocking news: the brazen abduction of 16 Americans and 1 Canadian in Port-au-Prince by the gang known as 400 Mawozo.
I’ve heard from many of you concerned about me and Have Faith Haiti, and this brief note confirms that we’re OK. Shocked, but not surprised. And on high alert with additional security — as we have been for some time.
The violent protests that called for the resignation of former Haitian president Jovenel Moïse in 2019 had already begun to frighten away NGOs and service groups; the pandemic only exacerbated resources. Orphanages have been attacked, most recently in April in Croix-des-Bouquets. But it’s not just outsiders: ordinary citizens are kidnapped and held for ransoms that families can ill-afford to pay.
Some of Haiti’s latest tragedies have made the headlines, but countless undocumented crimes are just part of daily life.
On a ride from the Toussaint Louverture airport to our orphanage in December, an angry group of protesters, wandering down a major street, spotted our van. Since we were the only thing coming or going on that block, they decided to rush it. A huge rock was thrown at the windshield. In an instant, men were screaming and jumping on the hood and the roof and the grabbing at the doors.
Fortunately, when our mission’s Haitian director jumped from the car and screamed that we were with an orphanage and were only trying to get to our children, the anger subsided, and in time the protesters merely rode on our vehicle as we continued on, past burning tires and closed shops. The men screamed at no one in particular. I think they just wanted their voices heard.
The journey to the airport earlier today was spared harassment. This time.
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Top image: A man drives his bike around burning tires ignited following a call for a general strike by several professional associations and businesses to denounce the insecurity in Port-au-Prince on October 18, 2021. A nationwide general strike emptied the streets of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on Monday with organisers denouncing the rapidly disintegrating security situation highlighted by the kidnapping of American and Canadian missionaries at the weekend. The kidnapping of 17 adults and children by one of Haiti’s brazen criminal gangs underlined the country’s troubles following the assassination of president Jovenel Mose in July and amid mounting lawlessness in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation. (Photo by Richard PIERRIN / AFP)
One morning at the orphanage, I heard a knock outside the kitchen door. I opened it to see a semi-circle of children burst into song — “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” — while a man in cargo shorts and a t-shirt played the accordion and guided them along.
This was not just any accordion player. His name is Dennis Tini. He once ran the entire prestigious music department at Wayne State University. He’s played with jazz groups all over the world. You can buy his CD’s.
But here he was, in Haiti, on the landing outside our kitchen, playing the simple chords of a Christmas carol and singing along with the kids.
One of many things that will astonish you on the journey to running in orphanage is how many people are willing to come along. From our very first trip to Haiti, when I wrangled two of my closest friends to accompany me, to our current status with four full-time American volunteers teaching in our school and a steady stream of monthly visitors, from photographers to doctors to soccer moms, there has never been a shortage of people willing to help out.
I will write about some of them as the weeks go on. They are worthy of attention and often quite fascinating.
But today, I begin with Dennis, because, at 73, his story is unique.
A beloved professor – in Michigan and Haiti
First of all, Dennis Tini is a world class jazz piano player who has shared the stage with legends like Buddy Rich and Jon Faddis. For years he taught at Wayne State University, co-founded its jazz studies program, ran the choral union, and became head of the entire music department.
When he retired a few years ago, his plan was to travel and perform, do some composing, and grace the stages of clubs and amphitheaters around the globe, where his talent was always welcome.
One night, my wife Janine and I called him up to say hi. We got to talking about the orphanage, our kids, how deeply they loved music. Eventually I tried to nudge him, blurting out, “You should come with us sometime.” When he didn’t say no, I nudged him some more.
Pretty soon, he was on an airplane sitting next to us. I didn’t ask what convinced him. But I knew once he arrived, the kids would take him over, they’d mob him and tug at him and ask if he could “teach me to play, too!”
And that is exactly what happened. We introduced him to the kids and explained that he was a great artist who had come all this way to help them learn music. When we asked who wanted lessons, every hand shot up.
Soon Dennis was working from sunrise to dinner time, teaching kids piano, accordion, guitar, bass, drums, vocals, harmony, notation. He began to come with us almost every trip down, always toting a new instrument in his luggage. One time it was a violin. Another it was a bass amp. He got his friends in the business to donate everything from flutes to microphone cords. I joked that he was bringing us an entire music store one instrument at a time.
Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
A musical (and martial) artist
It’s now been several years that Dennis has been coming. During that time, our kids have learned to sing in Italian, French and Hebrew, to perform in harmony and in rounds, to play everything from reggae to gospel, and to sing everything from “Ob-la-di Ob-La-da” to “Buffalo Soldiers.” Dennis has also become a de facto head of security — he has studied martial arts for years and is compact, strong and fearless.
“You see that fork?” he told me once when we were worried about violence in the streets. “That fork is a weapon. That broom is a weapon. You just have to know how to use them.”
And he does.
Dennis teaches in a classroom, in the gazebo, on the balcony, and occasionally as a strolling troubadour. It is not uncommon to see him with an accordion slung over his shoulder, playing pied piper to a line of children shaking tambourines or clacking sticks behind him.
Our kids have formed various bands and on occasion, as detailed in an earlier post, they perform “concerts” on the steps of our school. Dennis and I play with them for support, Dennis on one keyboard, me on another, directly across from him.
Sometimes as we play, I look over at him, his fit, trim frame, closely cropped hair, light mustache, eyeglasses focused on the keys, and I wonder what the heck he is doing here, with us, in this tiny corner of the universe, playing “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” or “Sing a Song” from Sesame Street and not getting a penny for his labor.
Dennis Tini, Appoloste, and Mitch // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
The answer lies is in the way his eyes spring open when a child sings a beautiful note, the way he gushes “Yes, now you’re doing it!” when a drummer clicks on a beat, the way he urges “Do-Fa-La!” or “One AND two AND…” The way he says “I just love these kids.” The way he shows it.
Remember when Lebron James famously said “I’m taking my talents to South Beach”? Well, Dennis Tini has taken his talents to a banana yellow orphanage on a potholed street in a hot crowded city in one of the poorest countries in the world. I don’t know why he keeps doing it. But he could not be more welcome. I look forward to the knock on the door this Christmastime, and the joyful noise that awaits when I open it.
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If you missed the live chat last week about some of the issues our kids face, you can watch it here.
I sometimes get asked what’s the best moment in running the orphanage.
That’s easy.
Arriving.
We have a tradition of overdoing it when someone shows up. Big time. It started years ago, and it goes on to this day.
“When we get a visitor, WHAT DO WE DO?” I will holler.
“RUN AND HUG THEM!” the kids will holler back.
And that’s what happens. Arrivals are a messy loving chaos. Understand that you can’t just sneak into our orphanage. We have a big thick gate, and a security guard who is on the inside, so in order to let him know you are there you have to do some big-time honking. Especially if he is elsewhere on the grounds. Or in the bathroom.
Honk! Honk! You can be out there hitting the horn for two minutes. So there’s no way your arrival is a surprise. Heads turn. Everyone looks to the gate. Finally, your vehicle bounces in — we have the world’s worst driveway, thanks to the Haitian street repair crews; many a chassis has been bruised, dented or ripped while entering — and then you pull up to an area under the trees, close to the gazebo where the kids are usually playing.
By that point curiosity has taken over, and dozens are children are drawing near to the vehicle like yellowjackets swarming to a discarded candy bar. And once the door opens? Well, that’s it. The running begins. The leaping. The squealing. The piling on. The hug upon hug upon hug.
It’s the best feeling in the world, isn’t it? To be greeted in love?
Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
The creole word for hug is “anbrase” — like embrace — and we say it all the time. When our kids gather around a new nanny, we tell them “anbrase li” (hug her) and they do. When a volunteer first arrives, same thing. “Anbrase li.” It’s gotten so common that the kids do it by themselves.
The arrival hugs are the most enthusiastic, and often come with questions whispered in my ear.
“Did you bring us a movie, Mr. Mitch?”
“Are you staying for my birthday, Mr. Mitch?”
Certain kids are particularly proud of their embraceability. Moise, for example, only 8 years old, will climb up my body with no help, and hang on by his legs in a vice-like grip around my torso.
Dorvinsky, 11, a smallish boy whose smile occupies at least 40 percent of his face, fancies himself a mini-chiropractor, and likes to squeeze around my tailbone until I grunt (I swear he has actually adjusted a few vertebrae.)
The teenage girls lean in gently, the teenage boys try some heavy arm-around-the-shoulder shaking. But everybody gets into it. No one stays on the sidelines.
Maybe this is my doing. I am forever telling them “You’re never too old for a hug.” And many of the kids who started doing this by leaping into my arms are now are taller than me, and stronger as well.
But I learned from my beloved college professor Morrie Schwartz (the Morrie of “Tuesdays with Morrie”), who was always seeking a hug. He taught me, as he was dying from ALS, that we desperately need human touch when we’re leaving the world, same as when we enter the world as newborns.
“That makes sense to me,” he said. “It’s symmetrical. What doesn’t make sense is why, in between the coming and the going, we act like we don’t need that physical touch.”
He’s right.
Especially here in Haiti.
Morrie Schwartz, left / Photo credit: Rob Schwartz
We recently had a couple of the teenage kids come back to America with us for medical reasons. They stayed for a couple of weeks, even after the doctor appointments were finished. We had regular routines, making breakfast together, riding bicycles together, and of course, big hugs in the morning, and big hugs before bed at night.
When they left, they wrote my wife and me thank you notes that they left on our kitchen table. They were precious. In one of them, Bianka, a 15 year-old teenage girl, wrote “These two weeks are the safest I have ever felt in my life.”
I teared up when I read that. It reminded me how much we take our safety, our security, our very right to live for granted here. In Haiti, where danger lies outside every gate, where kidnappings, shootings or sudden violent demonstrations are commonplace, and where there always seems to be an earthquake or hurricane that is coming or just happened, security is precious. Feeling safe is a luxury.
Maybe this is why the orphanage’s culture of hugging is as strong as it is. We are not in a great neighborhood. We do not have access to reliable public services. We are not wholly safe. But when you come through our gates, you are part of us, part of a family that revels in itself, in its joy, in its recognition that in numbers, we are stronger, and in caring, we are more secure.
Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Remember that song, “Embraceable You”? Everyone at our place is an Embraceable You. We may be the most hugged corner of Haiti. If so, so be it. As Morrie said, why pretend the feeling we need at the start and end of life isn’t what we need in the middle? I am leaving next week for my monthly stay in Haiti and already I am thinking about the car door swinging open, and the moment that makes it all worthwhile, the best moment of all.
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JOIN ME LIVE: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7. 2PM EST. FACEBOOK.
Reports about children’s mental health for the last 18 months are staggering, but providing a sense of safety and security for our children has always been an essential part of Have Faith Haiti. Social and emotional learning and support are built in to the care we offer. I’d love to speak with you about some of the social and emotional issues our children experience in Haiti, when they first arrive in America for school or extended visits, and take your questions about how we do it for a family of 50+! I also invite parents, teachers, and other care workers who work with kids and teens to share some of their advice. Please drop me questions in the comments at the end of the article and I will answer them tomorrow!
In the movies, directors sometimes use “timepieces.” A puppy is a good example of this. As time advances in the film, we see the puppy grow to a frisky young dog, a reliable mature dog, and a slow-moving older dog. This tells us the human characters are getting older as well. We never need a date or year. We understand how much time has passed.
At the orphanage, I have my own timepieces. They are the handful of kids who were there when I took over operations nearly 12 years ago, in 2010. Two kids in particular.
Appoloste and Nahoum.
I lump them together because when I arrived, they were always together. A pair of five-year-old boys, constantly playing, wrestling, eating and napping in unison. Nahoum was quiet, almost to the point of silence, staring at me and the others I brought down to help, until I caught his glaze and he lit up with a guilty smile that crinkled his eyes.
Appoloste was a clown from the start. He made faces. He stuck out his tongue. And he never stopped following me around. Some kids just attach to you. There’s no explaining why. You become a pair of magnets. Appoloste was mine.
“You hungry?” I would ask.
He didn’t understand the words, but he definitely understood the location (the kitchen) and the chocolate chip cookie in my hands. He nodded enthusiastically. This went on for a few days.
Then, one afternoon, we were out in the yard, and he pulled on my pants leg and looked up with a gap-toothed smile.
“Me hungry,” he said.
His first words in English.
Nahoum and Appoloste, 2010 and 2021 // Photo credit 2021: Danielle Cutillo // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Over the years, I would mark my time by how Appoloste and Nahoum were growing. I went from reading them books and kissing them goodnight to them reading their own books and asking if they could keep the lights on past 10 p.m.
Their bodies changed. Their voices went from squeals to sopranos to the inevitable downward tug of puberty. Appoloste sprung up like a reed, and every month he would measure himself against me.
“You’re going to be taller than me one day,” I’d say, and he’d smile, but always say “Nah.”
Appoloste through the years // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Nahoum matured into a stockier frame. I remember one time hugging him, he must have been 12 or so, and feeling the newly bulging muscles of his back and shoulders. What happened to the scrawny, silent kid, watching me from afar? He became a voracious reader and developed a real talent for art. I’d see Nahoum sitting at a table by himself, engrossed in a paperback or a drawing pad. I’d go over and rub his head and say, “Look at how mature you are” and he’d turn and flash that smile that crinkles his eyes and makes his face all young again.
Appoloste became a performer. He earned the nickname “Apple Sauce.” He was always dancing as he walked, or singing the chorus of a song, bursting out the words as if showing the world he knew them. At Christmas pageants he’d try for a plum part. During devotions, he sang with gusto.
But deep down he remained the same kid I first encountered: sweet, loving, shy in his own way, hungry for attention, and devoted, for some reason, to being around me as much as he could. When he finally grew taller than me – not by much, but he did – I congratulated him and he smiled, but he didn’t seem all that happy. I think part of him never wanted to reach that milestone.
Part of me didn’t, either.
Photo inception of Nahoum and Appoloste // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Lately, I have been talking with Nahoum and Appoloste about college. For years, each time I’d depart, they’d ask to go to the airport with me.
“Not yet,” I’d always say. “But one day, you’re going to get in that car with me and come to America for college. And I’ll visit you all the time and we’ll have dinner at my house every Sunday night and I’ll be so proud of you both.”
That day is actually coming. I cannot believe how speedily it has arrived. Appoloste — who is one of our two lead singers in the boys band the “Hermanos Brothers” — has developed a real skill for fixing household devices and designing mechanical things. He wants to study engineering.
Nahoum, whose art talent is good enough to warrant a special school, has lately been talking about becoming a chef. I told him “Fine, but you’re going to college first.”
In blurting that out, I became my parents.
And in so many ways, these boys had become my kids.
They have marked my life, month by month, since they were barely old enough for kindergarten. I can look at photos and know what year it was by the softness of their faces, by their haircuts, by the long pants they are wearing, or the way they fill out a tight t-shirt.
Nahoum through the years // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Appoloste and Nahoum turned 17 this year. By next fall, they’ll be legal adults. Gone are the days of lifting and carrying them, of their high-pitched giggles, of chocolate chip cookies and “Me hungry” and putting them to bed at night with a story and a kiss.
They are my timepieces. And time, which can move so slowly in this hot, impoverished country, still races by with children, faster than you realize, faster than you want.
This was a special week at the orphanage. School started.
I know in America the start of school means the death of summer. The end of fun. Back to the grind. Not in our place. School here is greeted like an old friend.
Or in some cases, a new one.
High-fives on the first day of school / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Ten years ago, we opened our school — or I should say we built it, and then we opened it. Using our crew plus outside laborers, we constructed, from the ground up, a three-room building along the far wall of the property. It was a simple cinder block structure. We put carpet squares on the floors and blackboards on the walls. We painted the outside a buttercup yellow.
But when we cut the ribbon to mark the occasion, we had done much more than christen a building. We had shifted to a new plane of existence. Our possibilities soared. The orphanage went from keeping kids alive to giving them a shot at a future.
Understand that in Haiti, school is precious, and mostly a purview of the rich. You cannot attend school without paying money, and you cannot attend the best schools without paying a lot of money. The wealthy in Haiti may pay in excess of $10,000 a year to send their kids to private school. Meanwhile, poor children are turned away at public schools if they cannot pay the tuition in advance, or if the child has the wrong shoes, or slacks, or shirt. If you start paying but have to stop, they will turn you away at the door.
When I arrived in Haiti in 2010, few of the kids at the orphanage attended outside school. Some took classes with an older female French teacher, who came by during the week. But it was hardly formal education. And hardly a ticket to opportunity.
Which is why the start of school each year these days is more than just a date on the September calendar for us. Seeing the new kids we admitted over the summer now in their bright blue t-shirts, ready to start learning for the first time in their lives, is a reminder that we can do something rare here.
We can challenge the minds of kids whom others cast aside, and lift those kids to a level where one day they never have to worry about having to choose between feeding their children or educating them.
First day of school, 2021 / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
“It’s a beautiful morning,
it’s a beautiful day,
Walking with Jesus,
every step of the way…”
I love the tradition of going to school at our place. The kids put on special t-shirts and pants (color-coordinated according to their level.) They line up outside the kitchen just before 8 a.m. They sing a morning song or two. And then, upon the signal, they march off with their teachers to their area of study. They don’t drag. They don’t sulk. More often than not, they are skipping or running. When people ask us, “How come your kids are so excited to go to school every day?” I answer, “Because it gives them something to do.”
Remember, we are not ripping them away from their PlayStations, their TV’s, or their posting on Instagram. They don’t have any of that. They play outside all day long, and all weekend long, so there’s no heartbreak over losing that for a classroom. On the contrary, school to them is a challenge. A chance to excel at something. And it’s fun.
For that, I have to thank my sister.
Her name is Cara Nesser — “Miss Cara” to everyone in Haiti – and she is two years older than me and has been teaching ever since we were kids in New Jersey and she set up “school” in the backyard for my little brother and me. She’s earned advanced degrees in education. She’s done curriculums and programming in different parts of the world. Teaching has been her life and her passion.
And so, back in 2011, I called her up.
“Listen,” I said, “I have a proposal. Don’t say no. Just hear me out….”
Cara Nesser (l), school director / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
How can I put this? She didn’t exactly leap at the idea. Starting a school in Haiti? A place she’d never been? A language she didn’t speak? And she was living overseas at the time. Just getting to Haiti would take days.
But deep down I knew, if I could get her to meet our kids, her natural love of children and education would take over.
And that’s pretty much what happened. The kids lit up when she met them. They sponged onto any book she opened. And like pulling an astronaut’s safety cord, we tugged at Cara until we guided her from outer space into the mothership. She became our school director. And she’s been running things ever since.
I remember our first day of school, ten years back, Cara and I both beaming proudly. Kids made figures on popsicle sticks, did games with a parachute, and read the words “Today is your first day of school” off a chalkboard. They were wide-eyed and giddy and really small.
First day of school, October 31, 2011 // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Today many of those same kids are a year away from going to college in America. The school itself has expanded physically beyond the three classrooms to the chapel, the gazebo, the balcony above the yard and sometimes to the dorms. We are in desperate need of growth — another reason to find a new place — but for now, we just keep expanding. We add teachers every year. The current ratio is one teacher for every five kids. Sometimes I bemoan how much the school is costing in staffing, but Cara will say, “Yeah, but she’s a really good teacher, I don’t want to lose out on her…” and next thing I know, we have a new staff member.
Meanwhile, our curriculum is not what you’d expect from a dusty, pot-holed, baking-hot little orphanage. We have three divisions — lower school, primary school, and upper school — and the classes range from basic literacy and numbers to World Literature, Cultural Geography, Meteorology, Physics, Human Anatomy, Geometry and Sign Language. We also have specialized classes in engineering, media, music theory, Spanish and woodworking.
Joy in the work in the first day of school / Photo credits: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
We teach in English, French, Creole and sometimes Portuguese (thanks to a great Brazilian teacher). By the time they reach the equivalent of junior high, our kids are pretty fluent in at least three languages. And come high school years, they are taking TOEFL preparation as a regular class, in order to do well on that test that is the gateway to their studying at universities in the U.S.
And that’s the thing. More than any academic accomplishment, what stands out with school at our orphanage is the pure love of learning. The sheer excitement of starting a class. School is never something to be endured. It’s something to be explored. I think back to the way I used to walk to school in the mornings, dreading a test, wishing it would snow, and I realize I could never — most of us in America could never — appreciate what school means in this hot and often forgotten country. “Giddy” is not often the word you associate with the first day of school, but it is at our place. The kids race in. The doors shut behind them. The learning starts. The world opens.
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Have Faith Haiti Mission
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29836 Telegraph Road
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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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