Timoun/Wilner in Maïssade

Germany might have been my birthplace, and America my homeland, but Haiti, a place to which I've never been (but one day hope to go) has a deep place in my heart. I don't know why—only God knows why, but I am connected, through my friends Michael and Michelle, and spiritually in ways yet to be discovered.

Timouns means children in Kreyol. Through an organization called Save the Children, I sponsor a child named Wilner Derval, who lives in a village in Maïssade Haiti in the Central Plateau about an 8 hours drive (over rugged terrain) from the capital of Port-au-Prince. I chose Save the Children because they have no religious affiliations. They also checked out well with the Better Business Bureau. The money I send goes to building a solid educational system in the countryside, paying for schools, teachers, and teacher training.

It occurred to me that although I do correspond with Wilner, who is 14, I don't do it nearly enough. All I have is a photo, which they update every couple of years and some notes and drawings from him. I don't know what his voice sounds like, or his laugh. I only imagine what his life might be through written reports

"The town of Maïssade, the main city in the eponymous district, is relatively undeveloped. Dirt roads are unimproved, with no drainage system to control the torrents of water that overwhelm them in the rainy season. Two large rivers split the district of Maïssade in three. Rocky mountainsides, the major rivers, and a lack of roads render most of the country inaccessible by motorized vehicle. Most people spend long hours walking to get from one place to another, or they just stay in the countryside. The exception is Thursday, market day, when Maïssade town swells with people and bustles with commercial activity. The district has 120 schools, mostly located in the countryside and many only partially constructed. People live spread out across the mountains, with no real towns or population centers outside of Maïssade town. . . .Students and teachers often walk long distances to school, fording rivers and climbing steep, often muddy paths. Schools in these remote corners of Maïssade are of poorer quality construction, many of them half completed. Usually there in one large room with a tin roof, a few benches, and sometimes a couple of freestanding blackboards."

As I was writing the above paragraph a light went off in my head thinking about where my father went to school--a large one room schoolhouse in rural Alabama in the 1930s. He didn't have to ford rivers for elementary school (he did have to walk a long distance for high school), but the similarity to the Maïssade schools is striking. I was inside my dad's schoolhouse some years ago (it has since been tragically torn down--that's another story for another time). It had one chalkboard and dad said they sat on benches. You've seen the image many times, I'm sure. This all makes me think of the Rosenwald school programs created. I've swiped this part from the latest edition of American Legacy

From 1912 to 1932 the department store magnate and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and black leader and educator Booker T. Washington recognized a need to narrow the huge education gap between whites and blacks. Together they worked to provide grants to African-American rural communities in the Midwest and South to build schools, vocational shops, and teachers' residences. The only catch was the communities had to raise their own funds, which Rosenwald would then match. In the two decades grants were available to blacks in 14 states, they built more than 5,300 schools and other facilities. . . . The illiteracy rate dropped from 90 percent at the end of the Civil War to half that by the start of World War II.

My dad's school, located in the Battle community of Alabama (which was very rural when he was a child) was never officially designated a Rosenwald school, but there was evidence that it was a prototype. My father went on to become a fine man of character and dignity, with a deep sense of duty to humankind. He also taught us a love for poetry and music (as did our mom), his own appreciation being learned in the schoolhouse. I'm hoping that something similar will happen for Wilner.


P.S.


Happily, as I finally got it in my head to really try to research Maïssade (I had been googling Wilner's school Ossenande, thinking that was the name of his village and coming up with nothing!) I found video on youtube! Bless youtube. I have some idea what life is like for Wilner. I'm going to contact the person who traveled to Maïssade to get a first hand account. I think he went as a missionary (I don't approve of feeding people food and religious beliefs at the same time, just don't, but I also believe that many people want to help out of the goodness of their hearts and souls, and that's the best way they know how, even if it's not the best thing for the people they are helping) Here is one video of market day.