So my moto man approached me one day and asked if I would be able to help him purchase books for his kids. Requests like these make befriending people difficult. You don’t want to be the white girl that hands out cash or other gifts but at the same time, sometimes you genuinely want to help a friend. Since this gentleman has been a faithful means of transportation for me since the selling of the vehicle and is just a really nice, church going guy I decided to take the risk and help. He had already paid his kids’ tuition fees and purchased their uniforms but had yet to come up with enough cash to buy the roughly $40 worth of books they needed. To avoid any ideas that all you have to do is say what you need to buy and I hand over the cash, I told him I would gladly accompany him to the school director’s office where we could buy the books. It sounds horrible to even think he might have been asking me to buy books but really just wanted some money but this kind of mindset comes with being a white female in Haiti… you have to think this way most of the time to protect yourself from being taken advantage of.
Yesterday, he and I motoed on down to his kids’ school where I met the most terrifyingly awesome school director ever. She was in her 40’s, sporting a sweet pants suit and even sweeter bowl cut. Her lips were pink to match her manicure and her phone rang constantly. She sat at her desk as parents came in to pay fees or purchase books. A school kid would linger in the hallway and she would yell for him/her to come in. The kids were clearly scared of her because once she yelled their name you could almost hear their inner thoughts, “Uhhhhhh…I shouldn’t have come….She’s mad I can tell…maybe if I just back away slowly…” But the parents in the hallway would push the child in the office where he/she would timidly ask for an agenda or notebooks. And then the director wouldn’t be mad but would give them what they needed and tell them she would see them tomorrow. Not with a smile exactly but not too harshly either. Somehow, she balanced the whole striking fear into children’s souls without being a complete jerk about it. An inspiration. I was even a bit nervous about showing her the book list. And you could tell the other parents were too.
To make her more awesome, she even had a right hand man. Jean Claude. Whenever she couldn’t find something or needed his help she would yell out “Jean Claude!” and boom, he was there. Again, she mastered the balance of ensuring that when she called he sprang into action but that he did so with respect and admiration, no resentment. He was eager to help her. In fact, she put out an aura that made me want to help her…and my moto driver too. A couple times he got up to show her a book she was searching for but hadn’t yet spotted. I suddenly got the urge to tell her not to worry about it, just give me the list and I will get the books together…though I didn’t actually say this for fear I would only offend her. Once we had the books she apologized for the ones she had run out of, thanked us for our time, and told us to have a good day. And then she yelled for Jean Claude to come help her find something. Seriously, I want to be this woman.
The best part was the juxtaposition of this woman’s personality to her office. It was bizarre. First of all there was a picture of Pope John Paul II hanging above the doorway which makes sense because the school is named after him. But it was literally a 4×6 photograph hung haphazardly with a tack like once the school was finished someone said, “Well I suppose we should put the guy’s picture up somewhere…after all we did use his name for the school…how bout over this door? Gotta tack or somethin’?” Inside the office was the strangest collection of items. A Spiderman mask, a pompom, balls for a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit, a box full of plungers, party hats, and boxes that contained who knows what other kinds of treasures. All of this surrounding a woman who didn’t seem the type to throw on a party hat and Spiderman mask and relax in her personal ball pit.
So at the end of the day my encounter with this amazing, scary woman left me with one resolution: I have to get me a Jean Claude.
Leave A Comment