The chairs were brought out early in the morning. You know it’s a big day at the orphanage when chairs are set in place. It’s either a Christmas play, a concert by our teenage bands, or a graduation.
And since it’s June, it must be…
Graduation. For years, it was nothing more than a short symbolic ceremony, seventh graders turning to eighth graders, eight graders turning to ninth. Our oldest kids were just approaching adolescence and our younger kids were still wetting the bed. Everyone was starting school again in September.
But last year, for the first time, we sent one of our high school graduates to college in the U.S. And this year, four seniors were preparing to go.
Four? Yes, four. Samanza, Esterline, Kiki and J.J. Two girls. Two boys. Each with a full scholarship to Hope College in Holland, Michigan. All four are ready for the challenge.
How could this be? Weren’t they just small creatures with high voices, racing across the yard in odorless sweat? Didn’t they used to jump in our arms when we arrived? Now, every one of them is taller than me, the boys’ voices are deep, the girls have extensions in their hair and college majors on their minds.
A look back: Samanza, Kiki, Esterline, and J.J. in 2011
My father, who had a great singing voice, used to croon a song at every family wedding or anniversary. The relatives would make him sing it and they would tear up when he did.
The song was “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Is this the little girl I carried
Is this the little boy at play
I don’t remember growing older
When did they?…
— Esterline, age 11, answering the question of how to spend a million dollars.
Now here they were, the little girls we carried, the little boys at play, wearing blue or white caps and gowns over their summer clothes. They stood in a line in 93-degree heat behind a seated crowd of fellow kids, teachers, volunteers, nannies, staff, guests, and a few family members.
I tapped the screen of my iPhone, and “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” played over a large bluetooth speaker. We’d dragged outside and connected an extension cord.
Hey. You do what you can.
But once the ceremony began, there was nothing jerry-rigged about it. The kids did us proud. They did everyone proud.
Here was J.J., who once wore plastic bottles on his feet and wandered the streets looking for money, now giving a commencement address that began, “This graduation would not be possible without so many special people…”
Here was Samanza, who was once the little girl of our orphanage and who now carries the babies as if she were born doing it, beginning with “In looking at all these beautiful smiling faces, one thing comes to mind…I’ve made it!”
Here was Esterline, once paralyzed with fear during the earthquake of 2010, now a statuesque, confident 17-year-old, thanking the teachers “whose lives were sometimes at risk to come and teach us.”
Here was Kiki, who spoke no English and had no underwear when he arrived at age nine, now delivering an emotional, 15-minute graduation address that brought a huge laugh when, after already speaking for eight minutes, he said, “To begin…”
At the end, the other teenagers came up and formed a line. And with Nahoum playing the guitar, they locked arms and swayed as they sang the song “Graduation” by Vitamin C:
As we go on, we remember
All the times we had together
And as our lives change, come whatever
We will still be friends forever…
— J.J., age 13, answering the question of how to spend a million dollars.
It wasn’t just the speeches by the kids, or the presentation of their diplomas, or the way we had to tell them to flip their tassels to signal they were officially graduated.
It was how the other kids watched them, with awe, with admiration, with joy. They couldn’t wait to pose for photos with them or try on their caps and gowns. Esterline, in her speech, said the orphanage had offered her “inspirations hiding in plain sight.” That’s what the new graduates were to the younger kids. Inspirations, literally right in front of them.
Just some of Chef Harry’s feast for the graduation party.
The heightened laughter, the joyous feasting on a huge meal by our cook “Chef” Harry, the endless hugs of appreciation from the kids to their teachers, their nannies, to us – well, it made for one of the top five days I’ve experienced since being here.
Why does graduation mean so much? Because in some ways, as Samanza observed, it means we made it. We made it through the dangers, the hunger, the storms, the violence, the natural disasters, the daily threats that stack up like a dam, threatening to halt the flow of their childhoods.
Photo credits: Danielle Cutillo Photography
We made it through all that and brought them to graduation, after which they prepare for their first airplane rides and a destination that will change their perspective forever. It’s a sense of pride, of joy, and, honestly, of relief. Nothing is certain in Haiti. Certainly not reaching adulthood. And definitely not heading off to college.
As we posed for pictures and the four graduates said their various forms of “thank you”, I could hear my father’s lovely voice in the back of my head, another milestone occasion, another passage of life.
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?…
I looked at the sky. I looked at the trees. I looked at the small miracle taking place in our yard. Four orphaned kids turned to four college-bound adults. Sunrise, sunset, indeed.
June. Summer. End of school. I remember the feeling those words used to churn up when I was a child. The “free” season. The no-jacket, no-long-pants, no-nice-shoes season. The bicycles and ice cream shops and summer movies season. The season of possibilities.
The words “June, summer, end of school” mean something different at the orphanage. We have no ice cream shops or movie theaters. The clothes don’t change much. The environment doesn’t either.
But summer is still summer, and our kids burst out of school like buffalo on a stampede.
Summer fun, our way
Over the years, we’ve tried to make summer interesting. In the past, we were able to take the kids to some camps, or bus them out for field trips to the beach or the mountains.
Unfortunately, with the kidnappings so prevalent now in Haiti, leaving the orphanage has become a rarity. Our staff members only go out for essentials.
And the kids never do.
In summer 2017, we visited an equestrian center. They might have needed more horseback riding lessons…
This has tightened our summer like an inhaled breath. We are locked inside, where the daytime temperature almost never drops below 93 degrees. Still, the kids come up with any number of ways to amuse themselves.
Remember relay races? Well, they still excite in Haiti, especially little kids. The old “pass the ball over your head and under your legs” is a particular favorite. Carrying a tiny ball on a spoon also works. And when all else fails, a straight out “Who’s the fastest?” brings cheers.
We also try and break the heat with indoor summer classes. Over the years, we have taught everything from macrame to auto repair to Portugese to violin.
Good luck getting past this goalie.
Kids also get into different games they can play on the concrete. One summer, street hockey dominated. Another it was makeshift tennis. Water balloons. Sharing two bicycles. Climbing the kenep tree and throwing the small fruits down.
Anything to fill the long, hot hours.
They said they’d been to many other orphanages, and ours was the first where the kids seemed content, happy and at peace.
We’re going to need a bigger pool
But as I’ve mentioned, we can feel the walls closing in on us. With a growing population of kids, our third-of-an-acre concrete rectangle feels smaller and smaller.
A few years back, we met a Haitian couple who ran a commercial construction company. Their names were Jean Marc and Verena and we became good friends. They visited with our kids and expressed their admiration for the way we ran our small place. They said they’d been to many other orphanages, and ours was the first where the kids seemed content, happy and at peace. Whether they were being factual or just being nice, we appreciated that observation.
And, because they are in the building business, we began to speak about expanding the orphanage. Building on top of what we had. The footprint is what it is, but perhaps going up another floor, growing vertically, could give us more space and more facilities for the kids?
[Video: playing in the kenep trees]
We drew up plans. We drew up more plans. We kept coming up with more needs, more space, more rooms. And of course, it was going to cost more money.
Then, one Sunday morning, our friends swung by the orphanage and asked if we could come with them for an hour. In a car driven by two bodyguards, we ventured out to a property on the border of Canape Vert and Turgeau, only about 25 minutes from where we are but up the hill and in a safer neighborhood.
We entered through gates and immediately felt as if we had entered a different world. Trees and colorful vines lined the pathway in. We came upon an open area, with a beautiful, grand white house sitting proudly on a hill.
“This is where I grew up,” Verena said.
We walked around for half an hour. The trees were so huge it felt as if they’d been there for centuries. The beautiful property was occupied by an NGO that was renting the buildings, so there were many people working there. Still, I was struck with how open and airy the whole place felt. It was even cooler than where we lived.
We had no idea why Jean Marc and Verena had taken us there, but we all agreed it was a spectacular site. We left and went back home. We grabbed some water and shared it with our friends.
“So did you like my old home?” Verena asked.
We enthusiastically said yes, we loved it. What a place.
Which is when the two of them smiled and said, “Well, we think it should be your new home. We want to sell it to you.”
Last week I wrote that the time had come to move, that certain changes at the orphanage had become inevitable. That remains true. But one consistent thing which never seems to change is the small parade of incredibly impressive people who decide to volunteer for a few months or longer.
Over the years, these have included pastors, nurses, graduate students, special education teachers, former soldiers, even rabbis. These folks, from all ages, step away from their often comfortable lives, in places as far away as Australia, travel to Haiti, find our little place, and hunker in on twin mattresses and a heavy diet of rice and beans just to make a difference in our the lives of our children.
Three of those volunteers are leaving us this week, having been there all spring. And before they fly away, I want to pay tribute to them, because, in a word, they have been extraordinary.
Bob and Amy Thibodeau first came to our place in 2021, having read about it on the web. They stood out immediately because 1) they were a retired couple in their 50s, and 2) they were from western Canada — and I mean way western Canada — Fort McMurray, to be exact.
In the workshop. // Photo by Danielle Cutillo Photography
Bob’s spent 35 years as engineer for petroleum and power plants and with Amy raised three sons — Bobby, Carey and Luke. At first, I wasn’t sure what they would do at our place. But it didn’t take long to figure out. Turns out the two of them can fix pretty much anything that moves, rumbles, runs water or needs electricity.
Over the course of their time with us — on two different stints, six months in 2021 and four months in 2022 — Bob and Amy created an entire workshop complete with power tools, taught our kids to build tables and chairs, to sew their own clothes, to assemble and disassemble a toilet, to create art with woodwork, and to provide hot water by stealing heat off a diesel generator, something I still can’t explain.
I get daily reports from Bob on everything from inverter batteries to tree care. Meanwhile, Amy teaches in the school. Honestly, I don’t know how they find a free minute between them
Amy teaching a class of youngsters.
Always time for family
And yet they find time for the kids. It’s a nightly thing, before and after devotions, for Bob and Amy to hear knocks on their door, and for kids to gather in their room, or meet them in the kitchen, to sit, to unload, to laugh. They have an incredible calming effect on the kids, the way grandparents often do with their grandchildren. Bob has forged a particularly strong relationship with Appoloste, who at 17 is now inspired to become an engineer, because he’s learned so much at Bob’s side.
Bob and Appoloste getting rid of bed bugs
I asked Bob and Amy what they will take away from their time in Haiti. Amy said “the gratification of a child asking me to show them something or to teach them something, and me being able to do it, that’s such a great feeling.”
Bob, who takes enormous pride in sharing his knowledge and teaching others work techniques, noted that one of the staff members, just that morning, had thanked Bob for his guidance, saying, “I get more work done with less interruptions and feel way better knowing I am in control.”
That sentence, Bob said, “makes it all worthwhile.”
Amy in the classroom // Photo by Danielle Cutillo Photography
Changed for good
And then there is Michelle Pipp-Dahm, or as we call her Dr. Michelle. We call her that because she is a doctor. An oncologist, to be exact, and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin. Although actively practicing and in her early 50s, Michelle was somehow inspired to take three months away from her work, her husband, and her seven kids to come live in 90-degree heat, on a single bed, with the barest of supplies, and help us organize our medical care.
Michelle and her chocolate birthday cake.
I could tell you a ton about Michelle, from her rugged, can-do attitude to her daily training for triathlons, but it would be better to hear it in her own words. This is what she wrote when I asked her to tell me what she’d take away from her time at the orphanage:
When I arrived at the Have Faith Haiti Mission in March, I thought I knew what to expect as I had visited briefly in January.
I thought I would spend 3 months teaching children health class and life skills while getting to know them and their culture.
I expected to help out with medical issues, being a physician. I expected limited resources, such as power/water/Wi-Fi. I expected hot and humid weather.
What I did not expect was the outpouring of love and affection I would receive. I also did not expect how torn I would be to be leaving to go back home to Wisconsin.
Spending this time at HFHM has been invaluable to me. I can’t walk 10 feet without getting a hug. The older kids have brought me mangoes, flowers, notes, rubber band bracelets, keneps and star fruits. I have found that right outside of my room is a favorite place for them to study and visit.
I’ve spent many a sweaty afternoon discussing life and the universe with JU. I watched eager minds soak up everything I had to teach them.
In the process, I did a lot of learning as well. I learned that nightly devotions are a welcome calm to the soul at the end of a long day. I learned that if your heart is open to it, it will be filled up with fierce love from 50+ Haitian children.
I discovered that love is indeed the universal language (especially since my kreyol is not that great).
I will leave here with a deep feeling of gratitude for this experience. I hope to be able to draw upon all of the peace and joy I felt at the mission and share that with my family, friends, patients and even strangers when I return to the states.
I leave here a changed person, for the better. I will miss teaching these kids, having my hair braided, playing guitar with Nahoum and being surrounded by such kindness in the middle of a country so full of chaos and tragedy.
There will be many tears when I leave and I am already looking forward to my return one day.”
So are we, Michelle, Bob and Amy. So are we.
Michelle plays the guitar
Amy says goodbye // Photo by Danielle Cutillo Photography
So does Bob // Photo by Danielle Cutillo Photography
I was looking at our two youngest children, Djoulissa and Phabi, not yet three years old, sleeping end to end on the same thin mattress, and it made me think seriously about space.
And how little we have at the orphanage.
“Tight” is too big a word for our physical situation. My house in America has more land than our entire orphanage, which is about a third of an acre and walled in everywhere.
To our right is a squatter who carved out a small triangle of land and built a tiny concrete house on it. To our left of is an often-empty residence. To the rear is a waste management facility that collects old latrines and generators. To the front is the street.
Green Acres, we are not. No “land spreading out so far and wide…”
But it’s inside the walls that we feel the squeeze. With 55 kids, plus 40 staff and teachers, you don’t take more than a few steps before you pass, hug or bump into someone.
In many ways, this is great. There is always a child a few feet away. If you have a new toy, or are showing someone photos on your phone, you will draw a crowd in less than 20 seconds. There is always someone nearby to help you carry a heavy bucket or a table. And when we do nightly devotions in the gazebo, we are thigh to thigh with one another, little kids sitting on the laps on the bigger ones. The sense of community is tangible.
You know the phrase “praying together as one?” What choice do we have?
Melting and mixing together
But in other ways, the lack of space has taken its toll. Nowhere is this more true than in our school. When we built that three-room structure more than a decade ago, we felt as if we had created Hogwarts. Compared to what we’d had, it was an academy!
But as the population grew, the school became as stuffed as a pepper. This past year, we’ve had two classes going in almost every room. We split the spaces in half, put chalkboards on the opposite walls, and teach out of both sides, asking teachers to keep their voices low so that the other half can hear their teacher.
This, in addition to turning the chapel, the gazebo, the music room and the balcony into classrooms. There is almost no space where you won’t find our kids sitting with their school books.
But that’s just one issue. As they aged into teenagers, we also found it best to give the girls more space, so we had to rent a house two doors down from us, which we call “the pink house” (that’s the color its painted.) Eight of our adolescent girls live there with two nannies. They come over for school, meals and prayers.
That still doesn’t alleviate the congestion. Our smallest kids, like Djoulissa and Phabi, have to sleep in the same bed. Our dining room, which used to fit all the children inside, is now is so packed that the older kids take their food and eat outdoors.
Our playing spaces are limited to a small dirt field and a concrete area. When it rains, the dirt becomes mud, forcing everybody onto the concrete for days. So we’ll have a soccer game with kids riding bicycles through it, nannies carrying laundry through it, maintenance workers carrying garbage through it. Nothing happens independently. We are like a big tub of melting ice cream. Lots of sweet things going on, but all of them dripping into one another.
A variety of space
Now, everybody lives differently, and everyone spreads out the way they can. I’ve visited farmland states where anyone with less than five acres is considered a city dweller. And I’ve visited European cities where the elevators hold two people and the cars can fit in a phone booth.
Even within Haiti, the spaces vary greatly. Certain provinces are witness to people so isolated you can’t find their homes without a map of the trees. But in Port-au-Prince, the capital, where we live, “living on top of one another” is not just a phrase, it’s a reality.
Hillsides are stacked like building blocks with rickety domiciles. Cramped tin structures abut one another on dirt roads, so close you could barely fit a broomstick between them.
Within the walls, extreme poverty clusters human beings like cattle. Ten people can live in a single room. An entire building can share one bathroom. Laundry lines drape the windows. Chickens and goats, sources of food, share whatever outdoor space can be found.
A family we visited in Aux Cayes outside their shack.
The Haitian people, forever resilient, do not complain about this: they accept it as a consequence of the impoverished country, and the price they pay for wanting to live in the big city, where there is at least a chance of finding work and a paycheck, versus the outer provinces where there are often none.
But children shouldn’t have to pay that price. Children should have room to run, room to move, room to grow and dance and to lay down with their hands behind their heads and daydream.
It’s been almost a year since I’ve been writing these dispatches. I’ve chronicled everything from lullabies to bands to graduations to a stray goat.
But I look back on the very first piece I wrote and I see I ended it with the sentence “Maybe it’s time to move.”
It’s not “maybe” anymore. It’s time. We have been looking for several years for a new home, a property where we could spread out and build new facilities and let our kids move wander and explore. We once asked them what they would add to our current orphanage if they had one wish, and the answer was: “grass.”
I think we’ve found the place…
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What readers are saying about “Life at the Orphanage”
Your stories touch my heart, put a smile on my face and I can actually see and hear those faces!! — Kristen B.
I cannot imagine what it must be like in Haiti, but each time I read about the trials and tribulations the Haitians endure I have a much greater appreciation for the everyday things that we take for granted. — Pat S.
Do you remember your childhood bedtimes? I remember mine. Until I was six or seven, I always got a goodnight kiss from my parents. Later, they opened the bedroom door and said, “G’night.” I hit adolescence, started junior high, and by my teenage years, was watching television later than my mother and father stayed up. The routine faded. Goodnight became something mumbled, if bothered with at all.
When I began running the orphanage, I quickly recognized the importance of bedtime. For one thing, it was when the newest kids cried or looked lost. This makes sense, when you think about it. In the joyous freedom of sunlight and playmates, you can forget that your mother or family is no longer around.
But when darkness falls, you feel vulnerable and alone.
Devotion, hugs, and kisses
This is why I started the routine of “hugs and kisses” after devotion. Those evening prayers are the last thing we all do together. So before we disperse, we hug and kiss one another. We make sure every kid gets a gentle squeeze and a peck on the cheek or forehead.
I’ve noticed some kids hang on for a long time. They don’t want to let go. The smallest ones raise their arms to be lifted. Even the teens will linger with an arm around your shoulder. Remember, there is no TV. No internet calling. The joyous cacophony of being together fades at night, like a disappearing sunset. Is it any wonder some want to linger as long as they can?
After that exercise, which takes place in the gazebo (the “town square” of our orphanage) the younger kids disperse to their bedrooms. From the early days, even until now, I would periodically go to each room and tell a bedtime story.
The rules were simple. Every kid needs to be in his or her bed – or the story stops. This may sound easy. It isn’t. The little ones love to roll off their thin mattresses or dash across the room. You become part storyteller, part traffic cop.
Each night, I tell a segment of a bedtime story, always leaving off on a cliffhanger. (Hey, I do write for a living. It’s in my blood.)
I’d like to say every one is a classic. But I went through all my Grimm’s fairy tales in my first year, and all the comic book origin stories my second year. By year 12, I am literally making up new legends and enchanted forests every night.
The kids don’t seem to mind. They enjoy the distraction of a story, and their eyes go wide whenever I describe someone flying or an explosion or a monster approaching. When I break the tale by saying “And do you know what happened next?…I’ll tell you tomorrow!” there is always a small groan.
I then go from bed to bed, giving each child another goodnight kiss and telling each one “I love you.” If one of them looks scared or distant, I always say, “I’ll be here in the morning when you wake up.” I don’t know if it makes a difference. I just imagine that’s what I would want to hear if I were in their situation.
[Clip from a video produced for the Detroit Free Press in 2015]
Baby mine
With the real little ones, I will sometimes sing a lullaby. I’m just an OK singer, but there is something about a soft melody at night that is soothing to children. And you never know how much they come to rely on it.
I remember singing a lullaby every night to Chika when she came to live with us in America. She often conked out while I was still singing, so I never really knew how much she was paying attention.
Then one weekend, we had to go out of town, and Chika stayed with friends of ours. That night I got a video with the message “Chika wants to say something to you.” I opened it up and watched Chika, in her pajamas, sing me back the lullaby I always sung to her. And when she finished, she said, ”Goodnight, Mister Mitch” and blew me a kiss.
I never again doubted the importance of how you put a child to sleep. Or how much they absorb it.
With the little ones off to dreamland, attention turns to the pre-teen and teenaged kids. Depending on their age, they get to stay up and do homework. They gather together outside, on a balcony, and work by the dim illumination of cheap Haitian light bulbs. Again, no TV. No surfing the web. No Youtube videos to pass around. No Netflix, HBO or Showtime.
By 9 pm, pretty much everyone is off to their rooms and by 10 pm, it is silent in the yard, save for a security guard walking or a stray cat darting between corners.
I often sit outside in that quiet darkness, ruminating on the day’s challenges and joys. I look at the buildings and think about how many young bodies are resting, dreaming and rejuvenating behind the walls. How many beds it takes. How many nannies it takes. How much food, how much water, how many sets of shirts and socks and underwear we go through in a single day, only to reach the end and do it all over again.
Once in a while, I will pop in on the rooms, just as my parents once did, opening the door a crack to assure that all is well. The childish symphony of soft breathing lets me know we are good.
When Chika sang me that lullaby, she messed up the words at the end, so instead of singing “off to beddy-bye we go”, she sang,
“Lullaby, and good night,
go to sleep like we do.”
I prefer her version. Go to sleep like we do. It may be simple, but that’s our routine. Goodnight until the morning, when we start the joyous challenges in this hot country all over again.
Feature image photo credit: Rick Smolan, former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer and co-creator of the Day in the Life book series.
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Have Faith Haiti Mission
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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.
