What are the children like who grow up in the face of abject poverty? What is in their hearts? What are their dreams?
Cité Soleil, Haiti
We drive down a long jagged dirt road in Haiti, strewn with irregular rocks and holes. I sit in the back of the truck gripping the ceiling. A bag full of paint, brushes and blank heart panels balances precariously on my lap. Dan Bratman, my friend and project manager sits across from me. Soulouque (or Johnny, as we call him), our Haitian translator is to my right and the rest of the truck is packed full with a small medical team comprised of volunteer doctors from all over the world. We are going to Cité Soleil, a tent city that the Red Cross has declared the most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere. The impoverished community has been plagued by gang violence, disease, canals of garbage and raw sewage. The doctors are going to tend to the medical needs of the residents of Cité Soleil and we are going to tend to their emotional needs, giving them a well-needed break from the turmoils of a grueling childhood.
Our truck takes a sharp turn and pulls itself up a steep hill shaking us back and forth violently. We level out and drive into an open area at the edge of the massive tent city. As if there were some kind of alarms or motion sensors, the moment I step foot onto the dirt of Cité Soleil the children come running. They have big smiles and happy eyes. They are boisterous and gangly, wearing mismatched clothes colored with dirt. They cling to my arms and hug me, rattling off sentiments in Creole. I wish so badly I could understand them. They find my hair a novelty and go after it immediately. They comb it with their fingers, twist it, braid it and brush it all over their faces.
The children cling to me as we walk
Their eyes are unbelievable. All of them. I am amazed at how pure they are; crystal clear windows to the depths of their beautiful souls. I ask them in French if they want to paint.
“Ouiiiiiiii!!!” They shout excitedly in unison.
Johnny, our translator tells them to spread the word to their friends and they run off shrieking with joy and anticipation. Within minutes a whirlwind of children of many ages come bolting out of the labyrinth of shoddy white tents.
The children sit on the the ground eagerly and chatter away loudly in Creole. They are anxious to start and I work quickly preparing 40 palates of paint for the growing crowd of kids (about 80 total). They are as patient as kids could possibly be. Johnny speaks to them in Creole and tells them that the image on the paper in front of them is a heart, just like the one inside of them and that they can paint it in with their feelings, hopes and dreams, with whatever it is that they have in their hearts.
These kids own less than any children I have ever met. One of the boys was playing with part of a ripped power cord as a toy, a girl was playing with a rubberband. I marvel at their joy within the confines of their poverty. Even before they knew we were going to paint they were full of happiness. These children posses something special.
When I first moved to NY from Seattle I worked as a nanny for a wealthy family on 5th avenue. They had three boys ages 13, 11, and 7, who I would pick up from school in the afternoon and watch until around 9pm, and then put to bed. Their mother would come come from who-knows-where each night after they were sleeping. Their father worked overtime as an investment banker and had his own babysitter for them on the weekends. They had been raised by nannies. These kids had all the toys a child could dream of. They had a small basketball court on the second level of their penthouse suite. They had a mini toy castle to play in, a micro-corvette to in which to cruise around the huge apartment and all of the latest technology and video games. They fought with each other bitterly and treated their mother and me with utter disrespect. Some days I would pick them up from school and the oldest boy just wouldn’t speak. He refused to talk with anyone for any reason. Not me, not his teachers, or even his brothers. He was mute with pain. If he absolutely had to say something he would go as far as to write it down on a piece of paper. I would take him to his therapist who told me he’d been that way for years.
What’s better? To have all the things in the world, but no love? Or to have nothing, not even enough food or fresh water but to have love, parents who are there, the emotional support of community and many friends? It’s easy to see who’s happier.
Finally the palates are full with color and I ask them “Are you ready to paint?!” in French and they all shout “Ouiiiiii!!!!” We pass out the paint and they go for it, attacking the panels with gusto. After they finish I notice right away a different kind of style in their work. There always is. In Japan many kids painted manga and pop-culture icons, in Mexico most of the children painted elements of nature, in NYC the hearts tended to include a lot of material things like phones, money and clothes and Here in Haiti the children’s paintings were full of dots. Dots and houses and stripes similar to the ones on the Tap Taps (Haitian taxis).
After the workshop we took a walk through the tent city. The children held onto my fingers, hands, arms, clothes and waist as we made our way past rows of tents, walking very slowly so I wouldn’t trip over the little ones. The adults stood at a distance and eyed me over with this hard, suspicious kind of look which made me a bit nervous. But I would look back at them with a tender smile in my eyes, a look that meant “we’re one in our humanity” and it consistently melted away their glares giving way to beautiful, somewhat shy smiles and nods.
We walked to the end of the tent city and finding an area with a little grass, sat down on the ground. The children crowded around me, petting my hair and rubbing my skin and gazing at me with love in their eyes. I felt like mother goose. I communicated with them using the little bit of French I’d learned, asking each one their name. The rest of the time Johnny helped me to talk with them. We stayed there for a long time laughing together. They became fascinated with a tattoo I have, a symbol I chose on my 18th birthday that to me represents the desire for “a good full life.” I told them that I made a decision on my birthday that I wanted to live my life to it’s fullest, to appreciate and live every day to it’s fullest potential. I asked them what it was they wanted, what they needed, what they desired for life. All of them, every last one said they wanted an education. They wanted to go to school. I told them to learn as much as they could and to work hard with a good attitude to build themselves a good, full life- the best life possible… all the while feeling like a kind of ass because these kids have the desire to learn, but they have no access to education. They would likely work hard if they had some way in which to help themselves, but they have nothing. I was at such a loss.
The sun started to creep down over the horizon and it was time to go back. We stood up and the children started singing together. Their little voices carried the tune of an old slave song with lyrics that said something to the effect of “Mama, we love you, why do you leave us?”. Their words and the sounds of their voices broke my heart. It melted all over the ground.
We started walking back to the truck and my brain was churning with their problems and searching for answers, for ways that we could help them help themselves. It’s not simple and it’s not easy, and for every one of the children at Cité Soleil there are thousands of others in similar situations. What can I do as one person? What can we do together? No one can fix all of the world’s problems, but if we each make an effort to do what we can, each in our own way, with our own specialty– we can make a big difference. And we do, and we are, and I encourage everyone to add some of their own magic to the pot.
These children need so much more than medical care and a day to paint and forget their troubles. They need a real chance in this world. A chance to survive and the means to thrive. The Hearts of the World paintings that the children made this day will be available to purchase via a donation of $50 or more. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to benefit the same children who painted them. The funds will be used to buy (locally) educational books and supplies.
The heart paintings will be available spring/summer 2013.
If you want to help by pre-purchasing one of the heart paintings from a child in Cite Soilel, please contact me at Nicolina@NicolinaART.
