Day 5, Dancing with the deaf

Yesterday, Sherye tells me the older teenagers had a dance party in one of the classrooms upstairs. She joined in with a line of kids, watching another kid count and demonstrate a new line dance. Lots of hand movements, the rhythm set to a song playing on one of their phones, hooked up to a small set of speakers. All the desks and chairs pushed to the side of the room. About 2 dozen kids, with 20 more watching and clapping.

A typical teenage dance party, except that all these kids are deaf.

There was a visiting journalist from Canada, whom we had met at the guest house and invited to see the school She has travelled extensively throughout the world. When she arrived at St Vincent’s, she was escorted around the school, introduced to JoJo and Marie Carmel and some of the other key people. She was then invited, “Would you like to see the deaf kids’ dance party?” She responded, “Where else have I been to a deaf dance party, anywhere in the world? ” Sherye tells me she and the journalist, Catherine, joined in the line of kids, sweating, dancing, clapping with the deaf, a celebration of a good time.

Later that afternoon Mackenson was sitting the courtyard, listening to his cell phone through head phones, and let me listen; it was a recording of him playing and singing a song he had written. I told him I would love a CD of his music and he promised to make one for me. I dont know how to do that in America, much less Haiti, but he apparently can use one of the school computers to do this for me. That will be a great gift to bring home.

If any of you out there reading this blog are music teachers, please recognize your potential to come and work with these children in Haiti. They love music, they write music, they sing and dance and play instruments. We have primarily medical teams when we come to St Vincent’s, but I would love to bring musicians to sing and dance and play with the kids. And the kids enjoy that a lot more than being stuck in the finger to check their iron count!

“We always get back more from the Haitians than we ever give – our money goes farther, the people are more appreciative, and they teach us to be better, if not more faithful, Christians as we watch them share with each other whatever we bring each trip.”
-Ruthie Lentz

“St. Vincent’s is a beautiful place; I call it our cathedral for children, a gem set amidst the noise and dust of Port-au-Prince.”
– The Rev. Drew Woodruff

“Haiti provides us a partnership opportunity in which we could never do enough but we where we can definitely make a difference… Something of my heart will always remain in Haiti.”
– The Rt. Rev. Don Johnson, Bishop of West Tennessee

West Tennessee Haiti Partnership

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