Back at the Arts Centre
You remember the kids at the Art Creation Foundation for Children, right? The ones who just loved our cameras last year. It was an emotional experience to go back and see them again for another mad crowd photoshoot. How they've all grown!
Nothing is easy in Haiti. It is hard work to make our foundation a reality. We are strong and intact. We are a community of creative joyous children and youth, every day closer and closer to self sufficiency via the arts, strong support systems, inner strength, compassion, understanding of social justice, and belief in the reality of today and the future of tomorrow and beyond.
- from the ACFFC website
Here (right) you can see Yoga Lisa talking to Georges Metellus, the Centre's Executive Director.
Do you recognise Bebe, the little girl in the background above? My, she's a big, confident girl now! (Photo of Bebe and her big sister a year ago)
This year, I tried to get more names. They were difficult to understand and repeat, with the boys laughing as I failed to get it right. We tried spelling in French and I couldn't keep up; eventually we wrote them down. On the left above is Wencith, and on the right, Dieussauve. The latter means "God saves"; it seems to be common to name your children with religious phrases in Haiti, where children are considered a sacred blessing from God. It reminds me of the Native American practice of naming a child after the first thing you see when they are born.
They thought I was hilarious. "Ou pas compris," they wrote on a scrap of paper. I was still clueless; in French this is "Where not understand." It was a couple of days before I realised that in Haitian Creole, "ou" means not "where", but "you". *facepalm*
