Kiddie Graduations

Time lapse: Graduations happened at the end of June after school ended. School was supposed to begin again at the beginning of Sept but has just been postponed until October by the government...(one more month of summer!)

At the end of the week were the graduations from Kindergarten. In Haiti the kids start school at 3 years old. By the time they get to first grade they have been in school for 3 years and learned a whole lot—potty training, sitting at a desk, reading, writing, etc.  Maddie and I were recruited to help get the kids ready…this involved robing them when they arrived, pinning a flower on them, and putting caps on. The first graduation happened at Repatriate for the smallest number of students—I think there were 22 of them. We got them dressed to walk in. Cute to watch them process in at an almost bridal pace. Then there were skits and prayers and speeches and costume changes and it went on and on and on. We were there for 2 hours and then had to leave as our ride  was leaving and they still hadn’t gotten close to giving out the certificates/children’s work.

The next day was both Terre Noire (am) and Cite Soleil (pm). Not as many costume changes at those two but still the ceremonies just kept getting longer. It was fun to see all the different parts with the children coming up to welcome parents and teachers, sing songs about colors, dance to different songs, etc. At the end when the names are called the parents come up to get the work and the certificate which I thought was interesting but it was fun to see how proud the parents were. We’ve been told that for some of the families these children can already write more than some of their parents! What an amazing way to move a country forward—educating the young to become strong members of society.