Inscription



Visiting a one room house with thirteen children

This woman lost her leg in the earthquake and yet agreed to take care of a child who is not her own

For the first time ever I was involved in the process of “inscription”.   In Canada I guess we’d call it “registration” but here it's just not that simple.  Every year we have a few spaces for new students to attend our school program.   Because our school is free, and many parents are not able to pay the monthly school  fees due to financial restrictions, you can imagine how difficult a task it is to choose new students for our school.   Every year, the process changes and every year it is just as difficult to say “no” to the many families we must turn away.  This year we formed a committee (sounds impressive but really I was just hoping to share the work with othersJ ) Each person had to visit ten homes and several days later we reconvened to make some difficult decisions.  I took along some of our visitors on my visits so they would be able to see a typical home/tent/tarp that our families live in.  I don’t visit students’ homes all that often and so this is interesting for me as well.  It’s also very hard, emotional and amazing.  It’s hard to see the dire situations that so many people in Haiti are living in (pre and post earthquake).  It’s emotional to see mothers and fathers with so little proudly showing you their home and inviting you to sit and chat.  It’s amazing that families with so little have agreed to take in children of friends and/or family and agree to care for them although they have no little of their own.  It is a truly humbling experience.  Today I met with the rest of the committee.  We managed to whittle one list of 21 down to 6!  But of course, now we have the task of calling parents and telling them that their child/children did not find a place in our school.  We would love to help every family in Haiti, but we have to recognize and respect our limits.