Making a Model of Meno

Samson took a picture of me (right) followed by Madame Cherie. This is the flat part before we start up the mountain.

by David Diggs

The sweat pours down my face as I make my way up the rocky path to the mountain community of Meno. Behind me Rosemene Cherie walks effortlessly. I encourage her to pass ahead, but she's in no hurry. She's going to the same place I'm going, to the newly refurbished elementary school up the mountain.

Samson Joseph, my Haitian colleague who manages our new relationship with this school, is walking just ahead of me. When Rosemene is just out of earshot he explains to me in a whisper that Rosemene is one of the poorer parents whose children are now attending the school free of charge with help from Beyond Borders.

He also explains that her investment in "sweat equity" has more than made up for any tuition could owe. She was among the many parents who helped with the construction work at the school. In the tropical August and September heat she carried load after load of construction material on her head from where the road stops at the base of the mountain up to the school.

"How many children do you have and how many are in the school now?" I ask her.

"I have seven children. The two youngest are in the school."

"Where are the others?" I ask.

She explains that one boy is too old now to start school. Another child died about the same time her husband died several years ago. The other three children she had to send to kay moun—literallly to “someone’s house”—which is a euphemism for sending a child away to live with (and work for) another family.

Parents and teachers from Meno carry buckets of sand and gravel for masons mixing concrete for school repairs in August, 2007.

 Parents hope that in exchange for their child’s help with chores, the receiving family will send their child to school and love their child. But as Ellen Lord of the Cincinnati Post reports, getting a servant child "involves an almost ritual deception. The potential owner travels - or has someone go for them - to the countryside. It is important to act rich - to be in Sunday dresses and suits, carrying radios - which are a status symbol in the poor rural areas. The poor rural parents…are promised the child will be educated, fed and cared for."

Instead of education and care, most children are badly exploited. Their days are filled with unending toil. They are forced to rise and begin work before all others in the house, and their work ends only after all others have gone to bed. Many of these children are treated no better than slaves.

"Where did you send your children?" I ask Rosemene. She explains that she sent one child to Port-au-Prince, another to Jacmel, and one to Tombe Gateau, a small town on the ridge on the other side of the valley.

Meno's Place in Rural Haiti According to a 2005 Demographic and Health Survey in Haiti, “Approximately 500,000 children aged 6-11 do not attend school of any kind, and only about half of all six year olds enroll in first grade.” Only one in five of those in school attend public schools. Others attend a wide array of private schools that usually charge tuition. This means that the poorest families cannot afford to send their children to school. This is especially acute in rural areas where 7 in 10 people live in extreme poverty (surviving on incomes that average less than US $1 per day). Meno is a typical rural community in many ways. There are no roads that reach Meno. No public schools or health clinics. No electricity. No water, plumbing, or public infrastructure at all. We began our relationship with the community of Meno in early 2006 when leaders from the community invited us to organize an Open Space gathering there that focused on child welfare and the needs of the community. Among the nearly 200 participants, the biggest concern was the lack of schooling. They felt this was the biggest factor contributing to the flow of children out of Meno and into servitude. We will soon conduct a house-to-house survey in Meno to find out how many children live in the community, how many attend school, and how many children have been sent away into servitude. We will also do a simple wealth ranking to determine the households in greatest need. This survey will give us a baseline from which we can determine the impact of future intervention in Meno. Our aim is to develop a model that can be replicated in other rural communities like Meno. This way, what we invest in Meno is also an investment in all the other communities where we and others who learn from us will work.

"How old are they?" I ask.

"I don't know," she answers. "Someone would have to look at their papers." Rosemene is illiterate, like most other Haitian adults who endure extreme poverty.

"Do you get to see them?" I ask.

"No, I don't easily see them," she responds. Like many of the poorest parents who send their children away, the cost of public transportation to visit a child in servitude is only one of many obstacles. Even if money can be found for transport, finding the child in an unfamiliar city is often very difficult. And while the reunion with a child can provide some momentary joy, it can also be a very painful and humiliating experience for both the child and the parent, with the child wanting to return home with the parent, but the parent again feeling forced to leave the child behind.

As I make my way up the mountain, the physical investment this woman has been making in the community school becomes more and more impressive. She can't weigh half of what I weigh, and she probably doesn't eat every day. Yet this mother of seven has made dozens of trips up the mountain with huge loads on her head. She carries 94-pound bags of cement and five-gallon buckets loaded with either gravel or water to keep the masons supplied with what they needed to mix concrete.

Like the other parents and community members, she isn't paid for her work. She works, she says, because she knows that a good school is what her children need to “make something of themselves for tomorrow.” And as another mother says in a meeting later that morning, “We need a good school in Meno so we can stop loosing our children to servitude.”

As we continue up the mountain, the footpath we’re on converges with others, and we join a growing parade of jubilant children all drawn up the mountain to the same place. “How many children,” I wonder to myself, “walked this same footpath but in the other direction, not heading up for school and a more hopeful future, but heading down to a distant city or town to live with strangers who will exploit and even enslave them?”

These children are walking off to their fifth grade class, which is still being held in the church building.

Eventually we round a bend where I first see the top of the church that temporarily houses three of the classes and then the brightly painted school that the community has been refurbishing. The students are already beginning to organize themselves in lines by class. They sing the Haitian national anthem as two children raise the flag and then file in to start their day.

About a dozen parents, the school administrator, and a couple of community leaders gather chairs and arrange them in a circle under the shade of two almond trees. This is the school board. They invite us to sit with them to talk about where things are going with the school.

Samson has met with this group dozens of times already. They take turns thanking us for the help Beyond Borders is providing. They explain how discouraged they had become, how last year they were unable to pay their teachers, how the school building was falling apart, parents had stopped sending their children. Now with the full scholarships for the poorest children and the five-to-one tuition match for other children, every family can afford to send their children to school. They have hired new teachers and nearly doubled enrollment. Beyond Borders is helping them improve the quality of schooling, too, providing building materials, books, and teacher training. All this, they explain, has given the community tremendous hope and energy. Their hope and commitment is palpable.

This woman accompanies three of her grandchildren and two neighbor children to school in Meno.

Samson hints at more encouraging news without going into detail. The board for Limyè Lavi (Beyond Borders’ partner organization in Haiti) has just approved a proposal to fund two literacy centers for over-aged children in Meno starting in January. This will give older unschooled children like Rosemene’s son the chance to catch up to grade level with students their age. Places will be reserved in these new centers for children who have already been sent into servitude. This will encourage parents like Rosemene to go and retrieve children from servitude, return home with them, and enroll them in one of the literacy centers.

We don’t have time to talk in this meeting of longer-term goals. But Samson explained how they share our hope that Meno will become a model that other communities can copy. Families will have their basic needs met and gain the skills they need to improve their lives. They will no longer feel forced to send children into servitude. Strengthening and expanding the school will be central to this, but other investments in the community will be needed, too. Community members will continue to get training in participatory leadership. Illiterate adults like Rosemene will have access to literacy training and basic education in such things as children’s rights, parenting, health, family planning, and sustainable agriculture. We will help local leaders develop partnerships with other organizations that can invest in the agricultural capacity, economic development, and infrastructure of Meno, too.

The school board, mostly composed of parents of student in the school, meet to discuss the future of the school.

 Our meeting ends with a blessing and wishes for my speedy return. On our way back down the mountain I feel so thankful. I remember that Jesus spoke of how his Father sent him away to us to be our servant. He became for us love incarnate, a child of hope who, though we could not recognize him and made him carry our burdens and endure our violence and hatred, freed us from our own slavery. I say a prayer asking that God would use Beyond Borders to make Meno more whole so that every family has its basic needs met, the community is able to draw back many of the children it has sent away into servitude, and the promise and hope of each child will bloom at home in the soil of Meno.

Please contact us if you would like to learn more about how you can partner with the community of Meno and support a particular class or literacy center.